


twilight of our hour

by customrolex



Series: come home yesterday [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: AU, Bucky Barnes as Captain America, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Partial Canon Compliance, Steve Rogers as the Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-27
Updated: 2015-05-27
Packaged: 2018-04-01 12:12:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4019308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/customrolex/pseuds/customrolex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He'd crashed the plane with every intention of dying. He hadn't really been suicidal, but if Steve were dead and the plane had armed nuclear warheads, risking one being deployed in order to survive the war didn't seem worth it. Nothing could make that worth it. Waking up in a fake NYC hospital room in twenty eleven had been probably the second last thing he expected. He'd hoped, crashing, that Steve had been right about either of his ideas of an afterlife: they were both good men going to Heaven together, queer or not, or that there wasn't anything. </i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	twilight of our hour

_Steve's back pressed against his chest, his thin frame cool against Bucky's skin. He was still sticky from sex, but Steve, ever the vision of perfection, had cooled already, settled against him._

__

_Bucky's arms lay over his thin chest, holding him close. Steve's little foot stroked at his calf. He had his sketchbook out, balanced precariously on Bucky’s forearms, tracing out a sketch of Bucky and the dame he'd shown around the dance hall that night. Her skirts were vivid in their movement, Bucky's face lit with the joy of dancing as he spun her._

__

_'Dancing with Doris or no,' Bucky drawled into Steve's ear, 'you know you're my best guy, right?'_

__

_'I know, Buck,' Steve promised._

__

_'And half the fun of dancing is watching the skirt sway,' Bucky continued. His voice was pitched to tease and Steve poorly hid his grin to show he liked it. 'If you'd put on a cute little number like Doris's, I'd swing with you any night, even Sunday.'_

__

_'What, are Catholics not supposed to dance on Sundays?' Steve asked._

__

_'Not supposed to drink, really,' Bucky admitted._

__

_'Didn't realise your idea of takin' me out dancing included_ hooch _, Mister Barnes!' Steve protested, faux-shocked._

__

_'Certainly not supposed to go with a fella on a Sunday,' Bucky mused, and Steve elbowed him with his sharp, little joints. 'Ouch! Hey!'_

__

_'See, this is why, if we could get married, you'd be the one to convert,' Steve told him, closing his book and looking up at Bucky. 'My God made people in His image, and that includes people like us.'_

__

_'Would your rabbi agree?' Bucky teased, because Steve was a bit of a nut and a lot of a radical feminist who couldn't always be trusted to see the world without idealism clouding his glasses, which would be more than proverbial if they could afford them._

__

_'Shut up,' Steve ordered, elbowing him again. He tossed his sketchbook aside. Steve shifted against him, leaning up to kiss his jaw. The soft press made Bucky’s stomach swoop—_

__

_And the swoop of his stomach matched the swoop of the landing gear dropping off the cliff, then rising up, trapping him in the plane. The stick of his skin was replaced with the weight of his uniform, of the shield on his back and the tricks in his belt. He glanced around, and hopped over the barrier to the catwalk. The grated metal clunked softly under his boots._

__

_As the wheels whirled and clunked to a stop behind him, Bucky froze, looking over the loading bay._ Chicago, Boston, New York _. Bombs. Bucky wasn’t a moron; he knew both sides had been investing incredible science into weapons bigger than him: ones meant to destroy cities. Destroy civilians. These couldn’t drop. Jesus, Bucky could almost forget Schmidt completely, focus on making sure this weapons’ bay didn’t drop enough fire and rage to raze all those cities to the ground. Bucky couldn’t imagine the hell they would wreak._

__

_A door clicked open and four HYDRA pilots ran, clanking along the jumps. Bucky swung up, kicking one over the side. His body hit the plane’s hull below with a revolting crack. Bucky’s stomach swooped again. There was no sound of the man getting up, just the shink of a knife unsheathed from beside him. He dodged the knife, which would have just scraped at his suit, and struck the man in the side. He kicked a second in the sternum—another crack, another body landing on metal with shattered bones and a still heart—and snatched the knife in the hand he still held, pinning the first man to the railing._

__

_He flung the knife at the pilot headed for the Boston bomb, barely having time to aim. It hit the man in the back (the heart, he could sense it as he turned), sinking hilt deep past HYDRA’s own protective suits. The first man had moved away as Bucky threw; he reached for a grab bar above a bomb plane, swinging himself towards the cockpit._

__

_Bucky didn’t think. He went to the control panel and opened the bay door, hoping that proximity meant this box controlled the right bomb. The bay door opened behind him. He turned back just in time to see that pilot dangling, both hands on the grab bar._

__

_Bucky had hit the man harder than a normal human could punch. Bucky wanted to reach out, pull in, save—the man’s right arm gave out, and he fell with a terrified scream, reaching for someone with no one there—_

__

_— ocean slush began pouring in the bay door, like the scream that kept pouring in, long after the pilot fell from view. Bucky stumbled back from the ice water, freezing air whipping at his face. This wasn’t right. He didn’t die yet. He had more time; he could still make it, still get there before the controls locked—he didn’t_ die _yet—_

__

_The water lapped at his feet as Bucky turned, trying to find the final pilot in the weapons’ bay, trying to make sure he didn’t haul the body off Chicago’s bomb, or pilot the other to New York—the rest of the weapons’ bay wasn’t there—he was in the cockpit, in the chair, plummeting towards broken glass and ice. The water was already at his knees as he let go of the controls—the plane kept diving; the pilot’s scream sheared thru the broken glass of the windscreen—the control panel had already warped like it had on impact, pinning him and shattering his leg—this wasn’t right; he didn’t die_ yet _and Peggy was supposed to be here—he should have her voice until they hit water, but the water was already coming in, rising, rising, rising._

__

_The warped panel crushed one of his femurs and pinned him in place; the pain roared in flames as the cold water, nearly slush, nearly ice, rose up to his chest, in his lungs, even as Bucky’s shoulders were dry. He pushed against the metal, but it pinned him like an ant. He couldn’t budge it, couldn’t swim free. He was going to drown; he was going to die—_

__

_He coughed, trying to breathe past the cold, past the water that wasn't even over his head—he didn't die like this; he didn't want to die like this; he couldn't breathe past the ice and water filling his lungs, his chest with the cold burn of death—the terror that seized him as his brain screamed for oxygen; it was as frigid as the slush and just as thick—it choked him just as much—_

__

Bucky jerked awake.

He stared at the clock, the red lights he still wasn't used to. Four thirty six am, no squinting or fumbling in the dark required. He coughed forcibly, as if expelling ice, rolling onto his back and rubbing his hands over his face. His breath was harsh in the hush of the medical room in which SHIELD had him. He had to calm down. He’d come back to base with them, only to be stuck in medical while they tried to suss out any damage from the ice. They had put him thru the same endurance tests Philips’ doctors had done after Erskine’s death. He thought it was clear enough from his break out, and the battery of finer-motor tests, that his brain and tissues weren’t damaged. He was just cynical enough to think they were more concerned with verifying the SSR files made immediately after his procedure.

Steve had been the sickly one between them; Bucky had never done well with needles and he’d avoided them pretty completely until he went to war. Needles shook him up like he was back in that very first lab, taking blood to create the serum, the lab that changed him, or in the ones after that, or in the one he blew up after hauling Steve out.

How did this happen?

He'd crashed the plane with every intention of dying. He hadn't really been suicidal, but if Steve were dead and the plane had armed nuclear warheads, risking one being deployed in order to survive the war didn't seem worth it. Nothing could make that worth it. Waking up in a fake NYC hospital room in twenty eleven had been probably the second last thing he expected. He'd hoped, crashing, that Steve had been right about either of his ideas of an afterlife: they were both good men going to Heaven together, queer or not, or that there wasn't anything.

Bucky sat up, swinging his feet onto the floor. He flung the blankets off and sighed. His skin was tacky again, under a plain, white undershirt and flannel pants this time. He’d been sweating in his sleep, apparently, just enough to chill him in the night air. That scream still rang sharp in the back of his mind. The sensation of bones snapping under his feet lingered like pins in his joints. He pressed his hands against his forehead, praying that the shake in his bones would go away.

‘It’s the year twenty eleven,’ he whispered, pressing his palms into his eyes. ‘This is real.’

He sighed again, his breath hitching. ‘This is real,’ he said again, the clock glowing. Dim light from the hallway marked a neat rectangle, just off center on the white tile floor. The hallway was presumably filled with at least one nurse. There were SHIELD agents in other rooms of the med center. There was nowhere to go, to be awake, alone in the early hours of the night. He wasn’t one hundred percent sure if SHIELD would let him leave now, anyway. ‘Can’t go back.’

He laid back down to sleep.

^^^

‘Captain?’ a voice called. Bucky turned where he was getting dressed, in what seemed like oddly informal, provided clothing. He pulled the undershirt (which had been accompanied by a light jacket but no actual shirt, let alone a tie) on before turning. The tee shirt was just tight enough across his massive shoulders to make him feel clothed in front of a stranger, but he was sure the tightness also made his shoulders look even more massive than they were. A familiar-looking man stood there, just a shade of memory in his appearance. Bucky frowned, but the man smirked. He swaggered towards Bucky’s spot by the exam table and he stuck out a hand.

‘Captain Barnes,’ the man said. Bucky shook the offered hand. ‘My name is Tony Stark.’

‘Stark. As in Howard Stark,’ Bucky said dimly. This man looked older than the twenty-seven years Bucky could brag. He’d be young enough (old enough) to be Howard’s kid, which was terrifying and strange. Bucky had missed so much time, so many people’s entire lives.

‘I’m Howard’s son,’ he said, confirming Bucky's fears. Bucky echoed his nod, considering. He felt his hands find his pockets and he looked out the window at the city view to hide how uncomfortable he felt. 'My father spent a lot of time looking for you, out in the Arctic, you know,' Howard's son added, with an edge to his tone. Bucky refused to let his loosed stays to catch on that blade. He wasn't a guy with a remarkable temper, no, but he was still reeling that he was alive, let alone having functionally travelled thru time like a science fiction novel had become his real life. If he had temper, he imagined he would have prickled just enough to set off the Stark defensive.

‘How is Howard?’ Bucky asked. He’d had his issues with the man, but he had been a good friend nonetheless. He’d been prickly, arrogant, brilliant and hard to like, but he had dropped everything to help Bucky and Peggy several times. He was the reason Bucky had managed to save Steve, from Azzano at least. He’d always been willing to risk anything for the people he counted as friends.

‘Dead,’ Tony said simply, slouching against the exam table. Bucky felt floored, his gaze snapping back to Howard’s kid. His heart clenched, because seventy years was a long time and Bucky had known people might be gone, but he couldn’t expect each blow. He supposed while he understood they'd lived on, past the war and into the real world, it didn't feel that way. It felt like they'd been lost too quickly, in a blink of ice and death. 'My parents died in a car accident when I was twenty-one,’ Tony explained.

'I'm sorry,’ he said, a little shaky. ‘I imagine he loved you very much.’ Tony laughed shortly.

‘He and I had what you might call a complicated relationship,’ Tony said, flippantly.

‘He was a good man,’ he offered anyway. Tony nodded, like he’d heard that a million times and it hung hollow. ‘I don’t mean to sound like I’m disagreeing; if your relationship was complicated, it was, but I remember a man who cherished his wife’s letters more than anything in the world. He treated those letters like they were gold. I’m sorry he didn’t cherish you in the same way.’ That hung heavy for Tony, Bucky could tell, and they both cut their eyes away.

‘He had his reasons,’ Tony said. ‘Well, what do you think of these SHIELD people?’

‘I don’t know,’ Bucky admitted. He eyed Tony, his posture and disposition so familiar and alien all at once. It was unsettling. If Bucky had a shorter temper, the unsettling juxtaposition would be enough to make him dislike the man on sight. ‘I suppose they did find me, even if it was a very long time later.’

‘A Russian oil team found you,' Tony corrected. 'SHIELD just paid them off and defrosted you.' Bucky frowned at that. 'I’d just keep yourself as independent from them as you can,’ Tony offered, fiddling with little boxes and jars on the doctor's counter. Bucky was pretty sure that he should tell Tony to knock it off, but Tony fiddled with a determined curiosity Bucky couldn't quite admonish. ‘Got a place to live?’

‘They’re providing me housing,’ Bucky said. ‘I’m supposed to be meeting an agent in the main lobby. They’ll take me to the apartment I’ve been given.’

‘You want to live in a place like that?’ Tony asked, sounding skeptical. ‘How patriotic.’

‘I’ve been a soldier for a long while,’ Bucky said, bristling at Tony’s judgmental eyebrows. ‘We spend most of our time in government housing.’ Besides that, he and Steve had accepted government help to stay fed and housed as much as any working class kids did during the Crash, and he’d never felt shame in that, not like prouder men did. This was a different circumstance, but Tony’s sneer set him off nonetheless.

‘Listen, surveillance tech improved a lot while you were on ice,’ Tony explained. ‘If you want an apartment where someone is always watching and listening, _be their guest_. If you want some actual privacy while you adjust to this insane situation you’ve defrosted into, you can be _my_ guest, until you get yourself on your feet.’ He grinned, like he thought that was particularly good wordplay.

Bucky stared at him. Tony stared back, unbothered, like a jungle cat who thought he was impressive enough to deserve stares. Howard had had the same attitude. Bucky wondered if things like that were genetic.

‘Howard wasn’t the type of guy to be generous with his space,’ Bucky said. ‘Weapons, tech, always, but he didn’t invite people into his house.’ He wanted to ask what’s your angle? but he didn’t want to be rude. He was just raw enough that it would come out waspish, sharp, and incendiary.

‘My, um, Pepper, she’s my, she told me to come,’ Tony admitted, somehow still managing to sound confident as he hedged his words. It was the self-assurance riches and genius bought. Bucky huffed an amused breath. Tony had a woman he listened to like Howard had had Maria. Of course he did. ‘She told me you were my father’s friend, and we invite family friends in need to stay in our mansions.’

‘Mansions. I always forgot Howard was rich,’ Bucky said. ‘He slept in the mud like the rest of us, but he’d be doing so in a silk sleeping bag.’

‘Sounds about right,’ Tony laughed. ‘What do you say, Jimbo?’

'I actually go by Bucky, not Jim,' Bucky said reflexively. Tony made a face.

'Really? Why?' Tony asked.

'It's my—My middle name is Buchanan, and my father's name is Jim, so,' Bucky said. He frowned, realizing. 'Was Jim, I guess. Been seventy years.' He swallowed around the sudden lump of granite in his throat. God, he'd missed his parents' lives, missed his sisters' weddings, maybe everything. Rebecca probably married George Chapman, if he'd come home in one piece, and who knew who Eliza married. They probably had a heap of kids apiece, and he'd missed those kids' lives, missed his sisters' lives, missed his parents, and Mrs Fletcher from next door; Tony was Howard's son, for God's sake, and he looked older than Bucky.

His whole family's lives had passed while he was frozen in the Arctic, while he was dead. His whole world had gone by.

'So?' Tony prompted. 'You coming?'

‘What makes you so sure they bugged the apartment they’ve offered me?’ Bucky asked, because he was more skeptical than some, but he was idealistic enough to be disappointed to find a stranger so sure of a breach of his privacy. His voice came out steadier than he felt.

‘Well, they’ve bugged this room,’ Tony pointed out. ‘I see one, two, three—’ He pointed around the room, and Bucky did see little, impossibly tiny lenses, the size of teddy-bear-eye buttons, tucked in good lines of sight, subtle as could be. Holy shit, cameras couldn't possibly be that small. ‘—and four. I think there’s a tracker sewn into the collar of that jacket you’ve got.’

Bucky stared at the canvas jacket lying neatly on the exam table. He frowned at it. He crossed his arms and then moved his frown to Tony.

‘I remember trackers being kind of obvious,’ he said. He held up his hands, a half-a-foot apart. ‘You know, yay big.’ He crossed his arms again and Tony chuckled condescendingly, tho Bucky was sure he didn’t intend to make Bucky feel half-a-foot tall. Tony pulled the jacket towards himself, feeling along the collar. He pulled a penknife from his expensive, modern, bizarre, pinstripe suit’s lapel pocket and pressed it into the back of the collar, under the fold. He pulled out a little green thing about the size of a nickel. ‘That’s—?’

‘Yep,’ Tony said, tossing it into the sink in the corner of the room. It pinged satisfyingly against the stainless steel cistern. ‘Still feeling good about government housing?’

‘Less so,’ Bucky admitted. ‘Less so.’ Tony looked smug at that, and Bucky wanted to hit him, in a mostly-good-natured way.

‘Come on, before Fury sees me on camera and comes to stop me from removing you from fake custody,’ Tony said, waving a hand and tossing Bucky the jacket. ‘I’ll take you home to Pepper and she’ll get you a place without surveillance.’ Bucky slid the jacket on, and followed the obnoxious man into the unknown.

Tony led him to a sleek, freaky car outside the SHIELD building. Bucky stared at it, unsure. It was silver and black, and it looked like a wheeled stealth jet, not someone’s personal vehicle. Bucky’s parents had owned a car, and it looked absolutely nothing like this one; even the nicest of the Army’s jeeps had had nothing on this, not by miles. It looked like a God damned spaceship. Bucky remembered Howard’s futuristic car; it had flown for Christ’s sakes and still looked like less of a scientific device. Tony peered over the roof of the car and the sunglasses he’d slid on, impatient.

‘Yo, Ice Cap,’ he said. ‘It’s an Audi R8 V10, with some of my adjustments. It’s literally the best car in the world.’ Bucky would bet that wasn’t literally true, but he sighed and opened the door anyway. Tony let him settle in, and then he shot off at a million miles an hour. Bucky grabbed the armrest on the door, forcing himself not to hold tight enough to dent the thin metal of the door under the smoothest leather he’d ever felt.

Cars drove differently than they used to, Bucky thought, half-panicked, as Tony raced around the bends and corners of New York’s roadways. The engine fucking purred, and the shifts were smooth and calculated. As it roared up to a parking garage, he had to admit it was kind of fun. Tony screeched to a halt in front of the gate, which seemed slim and elegant, but even Bucky could tell was quite strong.

‘JARVIS, honey, I’m home,’ Tony called to no one in particular.

‘Welcome back, sir,’ an ambient voice said, and the gate rolled up smoothly. ‘I see you’ve acquired our guest.’ Bucky looked around as Tony eased into the parking garage. He was spooked. Tony parked sharply and Bucky peeled his hand from the door. He hadn’t left a dent behind.

'Who were you talking to?' Bucky asked. 'Do you have a gatekeeper?' That seemed bizarre to him, even for a Stark.

‘That’s just JARVIS,’ Tony offered. ‘He’s my AI system, best in the known universe.’

‘And you use me to organise your social calendar,’ JARVIS lamented from the ceiling, like he was the voice of God. Tony scoffed as he flicked off his seatbelt and swung open his car door. Bucky followed him, staring at the other, equally-bizarre cars in the spots on either side.

‘I use you to organise all sorts of things; you’re hardly wasted,’ Tony told him. ‘Drama queen, am I right?’ he asked Bucky.

‘I—Who is Jarvis?’ Bucky asked again, unclear about the acronym and, honestly, most of it, as he followed Tony into an elevator.

‘I am a computer system, sir,’ JARVIS said, inside the elevator with them. Bucky couldn’t see the Tannoy the voice had to be coming out of. ‘I’m a programme with artificial intelligence capabilities, or AI, able to make some decisions and inferences in a manner more similar to your mind than that of computers from your day.’

‘He explains himself better than I do,’ Tony said, pretending to be choked up. ‘Where’s Pepper?’ he asked JARVIS.

‘She is awaiting your arrival on Master Barnes’s floor,’ JARVIS said. ‘Shall I tell her you are on your way up?’

‘Sorry, Master Barnes’s _floor_?’ Bucky echoed. Tony shrugged.

‘I’m very rich,’ Tony reminded him. ‘A floor is almost nothing to me, and besides, this guest floor actually holds three apartments, so this is technically your third of a floor, tho no one else is here at the moment. The building's not even finished yet, got a few more days of work. Took time off to get you out of SHIELD's claws.'

'This is what an unfinished building looks like nowadays?' Bucky asked, dry and a little bitter.

'That's funny,' Stark said, fiddling at a tiny metal and glass rectangle briefly. 'You're funny, Cap; nobody tells you national treasures are funny.'

'What is that?' Bucky asked. 'Everybody and their uncle has one.'

'It's a phone,' Tony said, sounding surprised. He held it up for Bucky to see. It had a little screen, all lit up and fancy. 'They haven't shown you these yet?'

'That's a telephone?' Bucky demanded. 'No fooling?'

'No fooling,' Stark laughed. 'I'll get you one.'

'No, that's too generous,' Bucky protested, like his mama taught him. 'You're already hosting me —'

'I'm rich and I literally make more phones than any other company in the market,' Tony pointed out. Bucky would bet that was literally true. Howard had always made the best of whatever he made; it figured his son was the same. 'It's not charity.' He tucked the tiny telephone into his pocket.

'How is it a telephone if it's not attached to anything?' Bucky asked. 'Where're the wires? Antenna?'

'That's maybe a bigger question than you're ready for right now, Grandpa,' Tony said. 'I’ll admit I don’t know what the height of tech was in your day; I have no idea where I’d start. Maybe wait till you've acclimated to the time difference a bit, eh?'

'Time difference,' Bucky echoed. A chill ran across the back of his rib cage, deep and shaking. He wished he could warm up. The serum was supposed to make him relatively impervious to cold, and his hands were warm, but his bones were freezing.

The elevator doors opened with a ding (the elevator didn’t have any buttons or a crank or a gated door or nothing, so how the hell did it know where they were going?), and Bucky had no choice but to follow this madman out, and along a short hallway with an obnoxiously large mirror opposite the lifts. Grey, opaque glass doors slid open, marked in white _unit one_ , as they approached, and they wandered into a lovely, enormous living room. Bucky swallowed nervously.

‘Captain Barnes, this is Pepper Potts,’ Tony said, and a beautiful redhead smiled big at him, her slender arms outstretched for a hug. Bucky accepted it hesitantly. She felt so kind and nice against him that he let her squeeze him happily.

‘I’m so glad you decided to stay with us for a while,’ she said when she pulled away. She really was beautiful. Tony’s hand landed on her lower back for a moment, giving her cheek a possessive kiss. Tony wandered off, towards— _Jesus_ —towards a bar running the length of the room. It was sleek, dark, polished wood, and it looked like, jeez, it looked like home. The leather couches and the big fireplace: they looked like a rich person’s house, but they were recognizably old in style (how odd that fashionable in his time would be old now). They looked like the fancy places he’d seen before he’d started in Peggy’s intelligence service, when the Senator was trying to wine and dine him. To be frank, they looked nicer than that even. It was bizarre.

‘Thank you for your hospitality, Miss Potts,’ he said, almost rotely, because he felt a little overwhelmed and figured he’d hide it by being too polite for what he understood of modern standards. If he had a hat, he’d sweep it off.

‘Please, call me Pepper,’ she insisted.

‘Bucky,’ he replied.

Pepper echoed his name politely, and Bucky smiled at her. ‘I want you to feel at home here,’ she told him. ‘Anything you need, just ask.’

‘Why?’ Bucky asked, unable to help himself. ‘You don’t know me.’

‘Well, no,’ she admitted. Tony was watching intently from where he shook himself a drink at Bucky’s living room bar. ‘But my maternal grandfather knew you. You saved his life in Belgium, when you led his squadron and your unit against a German base.’ Bucky looked away, rubbing his mouth a bit uncomfortably. ‘His name was Frederick Muller. He was just a private, but you hauled a huge piece of rubble off him, and then your shield stopped a bullet headed for his head. One of your Commandos carried him to safety. He told the story to us kids all the time.’

‘I’m ashamed to say I don’t remember him personally,’ Bucky said. He remembered a lot from the war, but he’d saved a lot of people and killed a lot of people. Things blended together. Very few people stood out, and almost all of those people were already dead. Pepper smiled kindly nonetheless.

‘I didn’t expect it,’ she promised. ‘But Tony and I both grew up hearing stories about you, reading about you in history books and watching you in the cartoons. You were found an awful long time away from home. I thought you might need someone to act like a friend would, even if you don’t really know us. It feels like we know you.’

‘I told her we were overstepping,’ Tony said as he finished fixing up whatever he was fixing. He flung himself onto one of the couches, and Pepper moved to tuck herself primly beside him. He slouched in his expensive suit (Bucky would call it a two hundred dollar suit, but he was sure money was different now too), and Pepper sat primly in her denim trousers and her dark green tee shirt. She lifted his glass, taking a sip, and Tony let her without question. There were far too many olives in the glass for Bucky’s tastes.

‘If we are, I apologise,’ Pepper said. Bucky settled into the couch across from them. It was the most God damn comfortable couch he’d ever sat on in his life. It was so comfortable it made him angry. He linked his shaking fingers, elbows on knees, to hide the unnecessary rage. He wanted to go home, real home, with the broken cold water tap in the hall and Steve hacking up a lung in the narrow bedroom on their tiny cots, not a high-priced imitation. ‘For us, it’s been seventy years since you died—crashed,’ she explained. ‘But I figure it feels like only a couple of days for you. I’d want to see a friend after that. Howard and Maria passed away quite a few years ago. I thought we’d be the next best thing.’

Bucky had never met Maria, but he’d heard stories and Tony sure seemed to love Pepper like Howard had loved Maria. It was, admittedly, kind of nice to know these strangers at least thought they cared about Bucky Barnes, not just Captain America, and his legacy. He’d met a lot of SHIELD agents and American soldiers over the last four days who had addressed him as Captain America, who’d talked about his legend, who’d skipped past the person with a catchy call-sign to the superhero character made in his image while he was dead. It was strange, meeting people who called themselves fans.

People had warped him into some blindly-patriotic, conservative symbol, nevermind he'd grown up in the queerest area of Brooklyn, nevermind that he'd supported Steve—who was sick enough to be disabled in their day—after his mother died, nevermind that he himself had frequented the drag shows and the hidden bars where a fella could dance with anybody he liked. He’d liked working in a bakery best of all the odd jobs he'd held during the Crash, never even dreamt of joining the Army; he’d been drafted and stayed until he died. He didn't know how to go about explaining that he didn't stand for any of that stuff, not nowadays.

‘You are,’ Bucky said instead. ‘I’m grateful for your kindness. I’m also grateful that I’m not somewhere where I’ll be watched.’

‘Tony was right, huh?’ she said, looking sad. Tony drank deeply, looking off and into the middle distance cooly. ‘Well, Bucky, what are you going to do now that the war is over?’

‘I don’t know,’ Bucky said. ‘I don’t know.’

^^^

Being left to his own devices was ironically the hardest part about this.

Bucky had been at war for a long time. He’d been drafted during what was technically peacetime, after all, and he had fought thru the entire war but not quite lived to see the end of it. This was the first time in a long time he didn’t have orders, and it was hard to get used to. He didn’t even need to provide for anyone, not his sisters, not his folks, not even Steve. He was on his own, insomuch as he was alone in someone’s guest apartment; he could make any choice he liked but he couldn’t force himself to make a single one.

The bookshelves on either side of the impossibly sleek television were filled with resources he imagined were designed for him. He'd picked up a text called _A Brief History of Post-War America_ , and another entitled _the Cold War Years_ , and while they'd been interesting, they'd also hard to swallow. The first book had explained the two enormous bombs dropped on Japan, on civilians. A quarter of a million Japanese, mostly civilians, a couple dozen POWs, and twenty two thousand Korean prisoners, all dead. He'd felt sick at that, imagining the carnage. He'd always felt sick when war spilled into what should have been safe.

He’d abandoned the learning he should be doing, pulling a science fiction novel off the shelves instead. _The Truce at Bakura_ was good so far; he liked it, but he could tell he was missing part of the series or another book. The parallels seemed too apropos, between that world after war and his.

Bucky tossed it down, onto the coffee table. It looked more like home with a couple of books strewn across than it had bare and minimal, like most of the surfaces in this apartment seemed to be. His hands scrubbed over his face, because this place, this time, was gonna have to become home. He’d have to make this year into home.

‘Trouble sleeping?’ someone called. Bucky turned, surprised to see Pepper in his doorway. He stood, rounding the couch to give her the expected greeting hug. Her entire legs showed beneath short, short, denim shorts. He resolutely didn’t notice how risque it looked, because she seemed so comfortable that it must not have been that risque at all anymore.

‘Seventy years of sleep will do that to a man,’ Bucky said as she wrapped her arms around him and laughed. He couldn’t help but smile back, because Pepper was lovely. She had been so kind to him over the past few days. She seemed to be in a particularly good mood that evening.

‘The building will be officially finished today,’ she told him. ‘Tony’s in the water now doing the last few things. Come upstairs with us; celebrate.’ She gave his sleeve a hopeful tug, and he tried to refuse.

‘No, this is something you and Tony have been working towards together,’ he said, waving her off. His hands tucked in his pockets. ‘You should celebrate together—’

‘We are going to celebrate together all night, if you know what I mean; you can come bother us for half an hour,’ Pepper quipped. Bucky laughed at that, almost a giggle. ‘Wow,’ Pepper said. ‘I guess I’m a lot crasser than women from your day.’ He shook his head, which had filled with thoughts of Peggy, and some of her jokes, how far she would go before saying it wasn’t ladylike, that she’d go no further, but his voice sort of stuck in his throat before he could share them. ‘Come upstairs. Have a glass of champagne. Tony and I will celebrate privately later. Come on.’

Once they were inside, Bucky was wowed by the sweeping back wall of the penthouse entry; the glass framed what seemed like the entire New York skyline. The rest of the room was dark, modern, with another well-stocked, expensive bar lining one side. Starks clearly loved to entertain. He wandered right over as Pepper walked over to a chiming of some sort, some technology sitting on a table. Stark Tower was full of gadgets he didn’t understand. He’d mostly given up; eventually someone would teach him. He looked out over the skyline in lights, trying to remember if he’d ever seen the city in his day up where Stark Tower overlooked. It seemed so long ago that he’d been in New York; after Project Rebirth, he hadn’t gotten furlough until he found himself on ice. He’d grown up in New York; it shouldn’t look foreign.

‘There you are,’ Tony’s voice called. ‘Where’d you go?’ Bucky turned to look, but Pepper was talking to a weird glowing light. That took his attention off the skyline.

‘Nowhere, I’m here,’ Pepper told him. Bucky wandered over, blown away by what he was seeing. Lines of light were just suspended in midair, floating and glowing. An film of Tony was playing in the air, at a bit of an odd angle, filmed close and down on his face. Pepper ignored Bucky as he stared at the lights, tapping her fingers along a solitary keytop.

‘You're good to go on this end,’ Tony said. ‘The rest is up to you.’

‘You disconnected the transition lines? Are we off the grid?’ she asked. Bucky rounded the table, squinting at the lit up version of Stark Tower. Jesus, he’d always thought the zipper on the Times Building was damned impressive.

‘Stark Tower is about to become a beacon of of self-sustaining, clean energy,’ Tony said, sounding oddly proud.

‘Well, assuming the arc reactor takes over and actually works?’ Pepper said, sounding just slightly skeptical.

‘I assume,’ Tony said somewhat petulantly. ‘Light her up.’

‘How does it look?’ Pepper asked him, sounding wistful. Tony’s eyes in the film in the air had lit up, and Bucky tried to figure out what exactly made the film work. He couldn’t fathom it.

‘Like Christmas,’ Tony said, ‘but with more me.’ Pepper almost rolled her eyes; Bucky saw it. He’d almost rolled his eyes in that exact way at Steve a billion times if he’d done it once. A sharp pick of ice dug at his chest, sudden and painful; he wouldn’t roll his eyes at Steve again.

‘We’ve got to go wider on the public awareness campaign,’ Pepper told Tony, barrelling on without either Bucky or Tony. ‘You need to do some press. I can do some more tomorrow, I'm working on the zoning for the next billboards.’

‘Pepper, you're killing me. The moment. Remember? Enjoy the moment,’ he chastised. ‘I’ll get in there and we’ll—’ Bucky saw where Tony’s film was coming from as he landed on the balcony outside the glass wall, like a—well, geez—like a superhero.

‘He can fly?’ Bucky demanded, pointing like a child. ‘Is that something Tony can do or can people fly now?’

‘Is that the Capsicle?’ Tony asked. No one answered Bucky, left to stare at Tony, as he walked down the balcony walkway, devices and robots rising up out of the floor to remove the intricate flight suit. Bucky spotted all sorts of complicated mechanisms; he’d bet that suit did a lot more than fly. He remembered Howard’s initial thoughts for his own uniform; they’d been outlandish tech just like that.

‘Tony, Bucky is having a drink with us before we celebrate together.’ Before Tony could grumble like Bucky knew he must be aching to, JARVIS interrupted them.

‘By the way,’ Bucky said, as Tony snipped at JARVIS in the background. ‘What is this? How is this—?’ He waved a finger vaguely over the lights and Pepper hemmed.

‘Um, it’s a holographic projection of a computer monitor display,’ she said hesitantly. ‘Um, it’s a hologram of the building, but this bar here?’ She motioned at the light-up bar building the hologram. ‘That’s the computer that runs this room.’ Bucky stared at the tiny, sleek box, echoing the word hologram in his head. Computers used to fill up entire rooms, even ones this size. Everything was so tiny nowadays, unless it was enormous. Light could be suspended in midair.

‘Levels?’ Tony called. Pepper passed her eyes over the complicated lights of the hologram.

‘They seem to be holding steady,’ Pepper said.

‘Of course they are; I was directly involved,’ Tony agreed. He clapped Bucky on the arm briefly on his orbit to Pepper. ‘Hey, Cap, why don’t you ask Pep how it feels to be a genius?’ Bucky parroted the question obediently, letting the palling around warm him up a bit. He was still so cold, like the ice was really lingering in his joints and bones and heartstrings.

‘Well, ha, I really wouldn't know now, would I?’ Pepper complained. Tony waved the hologram off and away, and the light fell into air.

‘What do you mean?’ Tony asked, sounding genuinely surprised. ‘All this? Came from you.’

‘No. All this came from that,’ she said, tapping a glowing circle in Tony’s chest. Bucky blinked at it. That had been hidden by an undershirt or perhaps his tie when Bucky had met Tony four days ago. The light was embedded in his sternum, incredibly.

‘Give her some of the credit, please,’ Tony ordered Bucky. ‘Give her—twelve percent of the credit.’ Bucky winced at that, and Pepper proved his wince right.

‘Twelve percent?’ They wandered off, bickering. Bucky stared at where the hologram had been, and then he ran his hand over the practically microscopic computer, like Tony had, but it didn’t light up for him. He waved his hand again, and this time the building did pop back up. He reached out to touch the light, expecting his fingers to pass thru, but the building rotated as his hand moved toward the light and the nothing, like he was turning a model of the tower. He tapped midair, and the hologram moved in closer, showing him details of the part he’d tapped.

Bucky remained distracted until Pepper called him over to gather a drink. He took the crystal flute from her delicately. He remembered his first few weeks with superhuman strength; he’d shattered more glasses and broken more things than he cared to admit.

As he took the glass she’d offered him, Tony’s phone rang.

‘Sir, the telephone,’ JARVIS chimed. ‘I'm afraid my protocol's are being overridden.’ Tony snatched up the tiny phone on the table.

‘Mister Stark, we need to talk,’ someone chimed. Tony held the phone up, schooling his face totally neutral.

‘You have reached the life model decoy of Tony Stark; please leave a message,’ he said.

‘This is urgent,’ the phone said.

‘Then leave it urgently,’ Tony said. The elevator dinged and a man in a suit appeared, carrying a pair of black dossiers. ‘Security breach!’ Tony cried. ‘That's on you,’ he added, pointing at Pepper.

‘Mister Stark,’ greeted the man in the elevator.

‘Phil! Come on in!’ Pepper called, pulling herself to her feet. She passed by Bucky on her way to say hello to their guest.

‘Phil?’ Tony echoed, leaping up to chase after Pepper. ‘His first name is Agent.’

‘We need you to look this over,’ the agent said. He held out one of the dossiers and Tony wrinkled his nose at it.

‘I don’t like being handed things,’ he said.

‘That's alright, because I love to be handed things,’ Pepper said, jumping in for Tony. ‘So, let's trade.’ She passed her champagne to the agent, and then passed the dossier to Tony.

‘Official consulting hours are between eight and five every other Thursday,’ Tony pointed out, as he opened the dossier, which slotted together, with a sheet of glass. Bucky frowned at it.

‘This isn’t a consultation,’ the agent replied. ‘I have a file for you as well, Captain Barnes,’ he added, with an almost-nervous tone Bucky had heard quite a few times over the last few days. It was bizarre to recognise that nervous tone as an indication of someone’s reverence of him, recognise the tone of a Captain America enthusiast, the tone of an older man meeting his childhood idol.

‘Agent Coulson,’ the man introduced, once he’d crossed to Bucky. He held out a folder, unable to shake Bucky’s hand while holding Pepper’s drink. Bucky was sure that was an unintentional side effect, but he appreciated it nonetheless. ‘It’s an honour to meet you, you know, officially.’ Bucky gave a thin smile, placing his own glass on a nearby sofa table, opening the folder. He was grateful as well for this low-tech approach, as Tony flicked images across his living room with great confidence. Pepper stood next to Tony, absorbing the electronic film flickering across the room.

‘What's official about it this time?’ Bucky asked, glancing over the first page, about a man named Doctor Banner, who’d been mutated trying to recreate Doctor Erskine’s serum. Peggy had predicted, when Erskine had been killed and the SSR had realised he had been keeping incomplete notes, that many men would lose their minds trying to create when Erskine had given Bucky. Here was proof. He was apparently a brilliant man, and mostly sane, despite his mutation.

‘I sort of met you,’ Coulson said nervously. Bucky raised an eyebrow, challenging the man. ‘I mean, I watched you while you were sleeping—I mean, I was—I was present—while you were unconscious.’ Bucky looked back at the file awkwardly, at the Iron Man file, detailing Tony’s suit. He could, in fact, do much more than fly. ‘From the ice,’ he finished. ‘You know, it's really, it's just—just a huge honour.’

‘Well, thanks,’ Bucky said awkwardly. He’d been told a bit abstractly that Captain America had become a huge cultural icon, but Bucky hadn’t expected adults to really care about it. Comics had always been for children in his day; he supposed Coulson had initially liked Captain America as a child, even if he was older than Bucky now. ‘You’re here to try to recruit us, then, Tony and I. I’m a weapon from almost a century ago. Surely I’m obsolete by now.’ Pepper eyed him at that, but Bucky ignored her.

‘Hardly,’ Coulson told him. ‘In the seventy years you were frozen, no one has successfully recreated the serum you received. No one has even come close. Besides, the world might need a little old-fashioned.’ Bucky hummed noncommittally, skimming over a page on an assassin called the Black Widow. Judging by the quick summary of what she was capable of, they hardly needed his serum. He wondered if the list of her actions was considered a list of accolades or of war crimes. ‘We've made some modifications to the uniform. I had a little design input,’ he bragged. Bucky actively didn’t consider what that input might have entailed.

Bucky scanned cursorily over the information about other operatives—no one provided a recruitee with in depth information about the recruited without a mission in mind; he was more concerned about the why than the with whom at the moment—and he froze when he saw what lurked in the middle pages.

‘Hydra's secret weapon,’ Bucky sighed. He shook his head, closing the file almost as quickly as he’d opened it.

‘Howard Stark fished that out of the ocean when he was looking for you,’ Coulson explained. ‘He thought what we think; the Tesseract could be the key to unlimited sustainable energy. That's something the world sorely needs.’ Bucky glanced at Tony, who had put his electronic file onto projected screens all over the room. Bucky saw footage of that red-and-gold suit firing blue energy pulses, an enormous green monster tearing a city apart, his own shield flying thru the air. The footage of him shifted from battle records to a newsreel; Steve sat across from him in black and white. The two of them had settled onto a jeep’s hood, leant over a map and an asthma cigarette. The camera panned past Steve, pulling into relief the photo of Peggy inside Steve's compass, tucked in Bucky's hand. Bucky stared at the screens, aware Coulson was gravitating towards them in Bucky’s wake.

'I'm guessing you want us as gophers to get it back from whoever stole it,' Bucky said. 'Your modern bugs can't help you with that?'

'I was against bugging your exam room, by the way,' Coulson offered. Bucky noted, as he was sure Tony did, that Coulson specified the exam room, not bugging Bucky in general. Bucky hated that. Some of the best intelligence he'd ever seen in the war had come from bugs, from mechanical spies. They had bugged enemies during wartime; that was the difference. SHIELD had bugged him. He had to assume they saw him as an enemy. They'd made him feel like one, lied to and spied on.

'We need someone to stop the one who stole it; we need someone to save the world,' Coulson said. Tony and Pepper fell silent at that, turning to see Bucky respond. 'We're asking you to pick up your shield and fight.'

'I already died once to save the world. I don’t know how much more I have to give,' Bucky admitted, trying to avoid Pepper's sympathetic eyes and Tony's curious ones. 'Besides, I've been fighting and killing for a long time. Surely I'm not still a drafted man.' He tried to pass the folder away; he didn’t really want to go after that damn cube, which had created those blue guns, which had vaporized all those men. He didn’t want to chase evil.

‘Maybe not,' Coulson said evasively, waving off the folder Bucky offered him, 'but this world is still at war. You died to stop a man from using the Tesseract to take over the world. It's happening again. Fight again.' He looked back down at the folder.

Bucky managed to look at Tony. He felt strung out, like someone had tanned his hide and stretched him out to cure and dry. Tony met his eyes and Bucky hoped he could read Bucky's hesitation. He hated feeling unsure like this; he preferred moral absolutes and he preferred knowing the game before he played. He didn't know the rules of SHIELD, nor did he know the rules of this century. There wasn't a backbone of understanding; he felt pitted against himself and his own unsure feet.

Tony nodded at him. At least Bucky wouldn't be alone. He turned back to Coulson.

'Who took it from you?' he asked.

'Someone called Loki,’ Coulson said. ‘He’s a bit hard to explain. It would be best if you—both of you—would come to a briefing. I can pick you up at oh-nine-hundred tomorrow.'

'I am my own ride,' Tony said coolly. Bucky sighed.

‘Fine. Oh-nine-hundred,’ Bucky said. ‘Pepper, Tony, you’ve been lovely hosts. Agent Coulson.’ Bucky turned to leave, taking his file but leaving his drink. Coulson called after him.

‘Captain. Is there anything you can tell us about the Tesseract that we ought to know now?’ Bucky stood in the elevator, confident now that JARVIS knew where to take him. He faced Agent Coulson before the doors closed.

‘You should have left it in the water,’ Bucky called back.

^^^

Bucky made his way off the plane that had taken them to the boat. They’d called the plane a jet and they’d called the boat a helicarrier. Bucky could see why. The tarmac of the carrier was a lot like aircraft carriers they’d had in his day, but with more helicopters and more planes than he’d ever seen in one place at once. Crewmen hustled about, with the attitude of any proper military base, which was disconcertingly comforting. Another redhead, with short hair, approached, swagger and confidence in her step.

Bucky recognised that confidence easily. He liked this woman on sight. A person who walked with that confidence was usually competent; he hoped she'd prove an ally.

‘Agent Romanov,’ Coulson said cordially. Bucky noted, because he couldn’t help it, the Soviet last name. ‘This is Captain Barnes.’

‘Ma’am,’ Bucky said, polite and sincere, because apparently the Soviet Union had fallen to be replaced with Russia. Besides, prejudice based in origin of blood was rarely justified. He recognized her from the files Coulson had brought last night. Her alliance to SHIELD might prove to be problematic if she tried to spy on him, or detain him under false pretences next time they were responsible for his vulnerable form. The longer he was in this new century, the more that charade began to bother him.

‘Hi,’ she replied, her voice deeper and silkier than Bucky for some reason expected. It suited her. As she greeted him, he read a distinct tension to her frame. He wondered what had her bothered. ‘You’re needed on the bridge right away,’ she told Coulson. ‘I’ll take Barnes and Banner.'

‘See you up there,’ Bucky said politely, as Coulson made off. Coulson waved, pleased. Bucky didn't want the man to know how distrustful Bucky felt about SHIELD, about Fury, and Coulson himself. Frankly, he didn't want even Tony or Pepper to realize how lost he was in the new century. He didn't want anyone to know how much all of these new challenges and risks terrified him.

‘There was quite the buzz around here, finding you in the ice,’ Romanov said casually, wandering back towards the man Bucky recognised from his files as Doctor Banner. He looked a bit lost, a bit frazzled. Bucky felt for the guy; he’d been feeling lost for days. ‘I thought Coulson was gonna swoon. Did he ask you to sign his Captain America trading cards yet?’

‘There are Captain America trading cards?’ he asked. He’d spent his entire military career as a nobody, a spy, and a covert ops leader. He’d been far enough away from the character of Captain America during the war that it had never really sunk in.

‘Oh, sure,’ she agreed. ‘You can get ‘em all over the place. His are vintage, pretty rare. He's very proud.’

‘You know, I signed my rights away for the duration of the war, not indefinitely,’ Bucky grumbled.

‘When you’re dead, no one looks after your legacy,’ Romanov told him. ‘Good thing you’re still around.’ Her phone rang, and she turned away. He glanced back at Banner.

‘Yeah, I suppose so,’ he agreed, mostly to himself. ‘Doctor Banner!’ he called. The man spotted him, recognising Captain America. He made his way over, between two hustling pilots.

‘Oh, yeah. Hi,’ Banner said. He shook Bucky’s hand, firm and gentle. His hands were rough, as well worn as his clothes. ‘They told me you'd be coming.’ His eyes swept over Bucky’s frame, almost disbelieving. He hid it well; Bucky appreciated it. He wondered what it was like, meeting him in this particular context. Banner had been trying to recreate the serum now standing in front of him when he’d been nearly killed. The serum was meant to be gone forever, but it’d just been frozen away for nearly a century. Banner had nearly destroyed himself before Bucky, the only successful model of Erskine's serum, was recovered. Bucky imagined that was as hard as being the frozen success model.

‘They tell me you can find the Cube,’ Bucky said. Banner nodded, looking about almost nervously. Bucky couldn’t tell if the man was anxious or uncomfortable; he didn’t seem pleased, either way.

‘Is that the only thing they’ve told you about me?’ Banner asked. Bucky shrugged, because the file had been pretty comprehensive.

‘That’s really the only part that’s any of my business,’ he offered. Banner seemed to appreciate it, peering about. He seemed quite out of place against a backdrop of military bustle. He seemed gentle and out of place; it was hard to believe a man with such a contained presence could lose his composure to transform into such a creature.

‘Must be strange for you,’ said Banner, motioning around; ‘all of this.’ Buck knew what he meant but he shrugged again, looking over the asphalt airfield.

‘I didn’t serve on an aircraft carrier ever, no,’ he agreed deflectively. ‘No, I never fought from a place like this. This—things are different now,’ he finished lamely.

‘Did you know how to fly that plane?’ Banner asked. ‘The one you crashed.’ His gaze was level and loaded; Bucky knew there was more to the question than the ability to fly a plane. Banner was asking a lot more than that.

‘I was never a pilot,’ Bucky offered. ‘If I could’ve been sure, if I could read German controls and if the biometrics weren’t shot, if the payload wouldn’t drop, I would have tried to land. No telling how it would have gone. But crashing takes little skill.’ He didn’t know if Banner got his answer from that; Bucky didn’t know if it was true anyway.

‘Gentlemen, you may wanna step inside in a minute,’ Romanov called. ‘It's gonna get a little hard to breathe.’ Bucky glanced around, seeing planes strapped down and men hustling to abandon the decks. Alarms started blaring and the noise of engines began to roar.

‘Is this is a submarine?’ he asked, moving to the edge, needing to see.

‘Really?’ Banner asked. ‘They want me in a submerged pressurized metal container?’ Bucky did admit putting the Hulk in a submarine was tantamount to idiocy. Bucky had never been in a submarine; he’d never had a reason in the war, and he sure as Hell didn’t want to spend hours deep under cold, cold seawater now. He had crashed that plane and had been very conscious as the ice water rose over his head. He didn’t want to go underwater now. He really, really didn’t want that.

Bucky peered over the ledge, and the asphalt beneath his feet shuddered. A turbine rose out of the ocean, and Bucky realised he was on a plane. He was on something that could fly. Helicarrier, not because it carried more helicopters than the Army had even had before he died; this was called the helicarrier because it flew. Fuck, Bucky had felt behind the ball coming out to sea at all—he kept thinking about drowning—and now he’d be flying all over the God damn ocean. He watched the water drop from beneath them, churning angrily as the helicarrier moved up, up, and up. His stomach lost its bottom, churning butterflies and the urge to heave. He pulled in a sharp, short breath.

‘Oh, no,’ Banner said brightly, which was about perfect for this situation they were now both in, rising out of the sea on a flying boat run by SHIELD. ‘This is much worse.’

^^^

Bucky had technically been warned that the uniform was going to be brutally ugly. It wasn't an explicit warning by any means, but Coulson had bragged about his input and the man was a fan of the comic version of Captain America whether he realized it or not. It was funny how history could get so distorted that that dead barely recognized themselves. Bucky wondered if anyone else had had the opportunity to see their history distorted in such a way.

The old uniform, designed mostly by Steve and Howard, had been Red, White and Blue, sure, but it had seemed natural; each colour was a different component of the uniform. It was practical, and the colour was subtle enough that he could blend into the woods at night and bright enough to make him a symbol for tired men at the front. There was a practically to it, a quiet and ridiculous dignity. It made him look a bit like the comic books, but Bucky had never read the comics, so it was easier then to ignore how stupid it was. It was easier then to ignore that he was a cartoon in America, because he was a soldier with a gun in a war. He hadn't been an antique from the Arctic then; he hadn’t been a cultural touchstone then. It had just been a scrap metal idea.

This new uniform was tight on his ass. He felt racy and indelicate. He supposed fashion might nowadays require such a firm cup of the buttocks from the fabric, but it didn't seem practical or useful, just uncomfortable. The belt had about nine hundred pockets filled with tiny, little gadgets which no one had explained to him, and there were zippers on his thighs. Why were there zippers on his _thighs_? They didn't lead to pockets; they were just pointless zippers, just wasted metal, which was the opposite of what a soldier's uniform should be. The material was strong, sure, but it felt sheer and soft and unlikely to be as brightly coloured as it actually fucking was. The candy-red boots were a bit restrictive but he could tell they'd at least absorb shock and impact well. The cowl was sharp on his chin and the stripes on his abdomen made his shoulders look enormous.

Holy hell, he looked like a God damned moron. He looked like a fey boy from the queer bars by the bridge. He looked like someone who didn't quite understand Hallowe'en. He looked like someone Brooklyn crumbs would give a pounding to in an alley. He looked like a cartoon character and a moron.

He felt like a fraud.

Bucky couldn’t think of a worse thing to feel like as he flew back to Germany to fight a new enemy who claimed to be a god.

^^^

'This is our stop,' Romanov called, from the front of the quinjet. 'Once the citizens clear out and there aren't people to cover from up here, I’ll join you.' The other SHIELD pilot flicked switches in the control panel above his head and the back hatch of the jet eased down. 'Hop out!' Romanov ordered. Bucky hurried to the back of the jet. He peered out the door, at the scurrying people and the cobblestone about fifty feet below. 

 

Bucky had dropped out of three planes in his life. The first plane he'd jumped out of had been flying thru flak above the most well fortified territory in the European theatre. He'd landed more or less easily, but the trip down was horrific because of the anti-aircraft missiles exploding all around him, not because of the drop. The next few times were with his Commandos, some of whom had actually been to jump school and knew what the hell they were doing. He hadn’t been afraid then either. That was before he had died in a plane crash. He was afraid now, in a way he hadn't been before.

 

But what could he do? There was a god hoping to murder people and take over the world. He was an evil man with, apparently, actual magic, not just mad science. It was his first fight all over again; a bully wanted to hurt someone weaker then them. Bucky jumped. He fell. 

 

Bucky hit the ground and rolled to absorb the shock, then back to his feet. His shield hung comfortingly at his arm. He was at an opera house, he supposed by the columns and the outfits, the streams of black tie gala goers running from the building. In his ridiculous, moronic uniform, which was so boldly coloured men and women running for their lives stopped running to stare and point, he ran up the steps. In the vaulted, marble foyer, the dark haired, pale god stood in green, gold and black robes. Antlers rose from his helmet, reminiscent of the myths Bucky had read when trying to understand and study Johann Schmidt's madness. Bucky's candy red boots skidded to a stop on highly polished marble floor, slipping more than was practical. Holy shit, this new uniform was genuinely the worst. Loki looked surprised to see Bucky, like he was early to the event.

 

'Ah, Captain America,' Loki crowed. He recovered his surprise and grinned, slick and obsequious. He stepped forward, the end of his staff clicking sharply against the marble. 'I've heard a great deal about you; you're rather famous. Are you here to fight me? Put me in a cage?' He stopped before approaching too close to Bucky, wary despite his godlike powers. Bucky hoped that wariness would translate to a willingness to surrender.

 

'I've heard you're here to kill people,' Bucky replied. 'I'm here to stop that. I'd prefer not to fight you. I'd prefer you just go back to your planet. Back where you belong.'

 

'A noble goal from a noble man,' Loki said, crossing his feet as he circled slightly. Bucky kept his eyes on Loki, turning to keep his shield between him and the sceptre which glowed like the energy stores on HYDRA weapons. He wondered, if the power of the sceptre came from the Cube, what was the magic which made Loki a god. The Cube could be controlled by humans just as easily as gods. 'Unfortunately, I belong here. And I am here to do much more than kill. I am here to rule this world as a god and as a king.'

 

'This world isn't yours to take,' Bucky pointed out. Loki laughed.

 

'And is it yours to protect?' He stopped circling, aiming his sceptre theatrically, not to fire. 'You, who has died for it once already?'

 

'Someone’s gotta do it,' Bucky said. 'Stand down. You can either go home now or be placed under arrest by SHIELD.' Fury would be miffed to say the least if Loki wasn't arrested. Bucky didn't care. He wanted Loki to stop; he didn't care much what stopped him.

 

'Of course, we both know you didn’t truly die to protect the world,' Loki continued, turning away and walking, as if Bucky were having a casual chat with him, not trying to avoid a firefight. 'No, you might have been willing to, but that isn’t why you decided to crash that plane.'

 

'I died to stop HYDRA,' he corrected. Loki turned back to him. His cape billowed behind him. 'I’d die again if it would stop people like you.'

 

Bucky spotted Agent Romanov's red hair in the atrium behind them. She had unholstered the Glock at her hip, but it was aimed down, fingers off the trigger, at the ready. She was creeping forward slowly, from the service door she’d appeared at to a too-far marble pillar. Bucky felt a bit panicked at that. If the sceptre fired like those HYDRA weapons did, as its glowing implied, she would vaporize in a puff of blue energy if Loki whipped around and fired at her. He’d have to hold his attention until she made her way to cover.

 

'No, you didn't kill yourself to stop people like me. You killed yourself because your heart was broken,' Loki accused, his voice pitched low and sad, mocking. Bucky felt his breath catch. Loki's eyebrows curved up and if Bucky didn’t know better, he would have believed that sympathetic expression. Loki wasn't sympathetic; he had aimed those words with the intention of wounding and he had to know he had succeeded. 'You died because you were afraid you would be unable to live without your feisty little blond.'

 

'You shut your damn mouth,' Buck snapped, before he could help himself. His voice shook and his heart was racing like he'd run fifty miles. Loki laughed, loud and joyful. He began his circling again. Romanov was behind cover and waiting for a signal to engage. Loki's movement was oddly hard to track and Bucky wondered if that was because of magic or the rage running thru his fingers.

 

‘You fell in love with his idealism, surely,’ Loki continued. ‘You fell in love with his faith in the righteous winning out. You tried to become a better man for him, tried to be worthy of someone like him. It must be terrible to know you weren’t ever good enough, that you’re still not, all these years later. You couldn’t save the good doctor or even his life’s work, and the sickly one went to war to save lives while you toiled at a typewriter. He bathed in blood while you flirted with your superior officer.’

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Bucky lied. Loki laughed, a low, haunting chuckle. ‘It wasn’t like that at all.’ It had been like that. It had been just like that. Steve had been like yellow sunshine pouring thru an angry storm cloud and all Bucky had ever wanted to do was give him blue skies. All Bucky had given him was a blasted hole in the side of a grey train and a broken railing.

 

'Oh, you are aching, aren't you?' Loki asked him, stepping closer. Bucky almost stumbled back, maintaining the distance between them even as he seethed. He hated that that gave Loki a confidence, hated that it let him know he was pressing hard on the deepest bruise on Bucky’s heart. 'You are all blood and pins on the inside; I can see that like you could hear him struggle for breath on cold nights. The missing embrace of your lover, it must twist at every fibre of your soul. Doesn’t it burn at you to know that he died screaming, falling, _terrified_? Doesn’t it just eat you up inside, to know he died thinking you should have caught him?'

 

That broke him; Bucky heaved his shield, hard, and it passed thru Loki like nothing. He dissipated like smoke. The shield rebounded off a marble pillar, cracking the fine, polished surface, and Bucky lifted his arm to catch it easily. He looked to Romanov, confused as all hell; her gun was up and aimed behind him. He spun, lifting his shield instinctively.

 

Loki fired—had he fucking teleported?—and the blast from his sceptre rebounded against Bucky's waiting shield, hitting Loki in the stomach and knocking his hips far enough back that his feet went from underneath him as well. He hit the ground hard. He didn't vaporize like a HYDRA weapon would have made him. Bucky resented that for a precarious second. Iron Man landed behind Loki with a clank. Loki pushed himself up to his knees, hand going to his sceptre.

 

Romanov stood beside Bucky, gun raised. 'Stand down,' she ordered. Iron Man let out a whirl as he raised the glowing circle of one palm; illuminated missiles rose out of his arms and shoulders. Loki considered the weaponry and his hand stilled from reaching for his own.

 

'Your move, reindeer games,' he said, his voice compressed slightly by the Tannoy of his suit. Loki raised his hands. 'Nice move.' His elaborate costume fell away. Tony's guns folded back into his suit. Bucky stared dispassionately at Loki as Romanov placed him in magnetic cuffs and hauled him to his feet.

 

'Bucky boy, good to see you,' Tony offered casually as Romanov did the heavy lifting and hauled off the crazed good. Bucky barely spared him a glance, stalking after the others. He was hot under the collar, anger prickling almost tangibly under his clavicles and in his jugular. 'Whoa, you OK?' Bucky didn't answer; he walked past Tony, down the steps and boarded the jet which had landed in the square the German police had cleared.

 

Loki was told to sit down and he complied easily. Bucky passed him and yanked the sharp cowl off his head. He was furious. He was so God damned angry. The anger ran so deep that it cut through him, and he felt like he'd bled out onto the marble floor and then the metal of the jet. He felt raked over coals. At least he wasn’t frozen anymore.

 

The other SHIELD pilot lifted off as the hatch closed. Tony removed his helmet and lingered at the back, clearly unsure if he should try to talk to Bucky despite his own lack of emotional intelligence. Romanov nudged him slightly as she made her way back to the gunning pilot chair. He looked down at her as he leaned an arm up against the bulkhead. His hand was shaking. He hid the tremble in a tightly held fist.

 

'You all right?' she asked quietly. He swallowed thickly and nodded. His gaze fell to the floor tho so she must have known he was lying. 'What was Loki talking about?' she pressed. Tony was watching Loki pretty closely, needling the god aimlessly.

 

'So you went pretty Rock of Ages with the look there,' he said, waving one of his gauntlets over Loki’s suit. 'Who’s your stylist?' Loki and everyone else on the small jet ignored him.

 

'You heard him,' Bucky bit out, answering Romanov’s question if only to get her to lift her powerful gaze from him. He wasn’t sure if it was because she was Russian or a spy, but her patient staring as she waited for him to reply was nearly enough to force him to spill his beans. ’That’s about the size of it,' he said. He hoped that was the end of it. His voice sounded like paper that was tissue thin and ready to tear. He had to pull himself together. He was a man; he didn’t get to break down like this, and more importantly, he couldn’t keep the things SHIELD wanted from him in line if he was blowing up like a dying star every five minutes at the mention of a corpse lost in a mountain range nearly seventy years ago.

 

'Who was he?' Romanov asked. 'The one who died.' Bucky looked back at her. That grey gaze levelled him.

 

'Does it matter?' he snapped. She shrugged coolly.

 

'It might,' she murmured. He chewed at his lip. 'Captain.' Thunder rolled and lightning cracked its way across the sky. Bucky let the noise distract him. He looked back, and noticed Loki seemed wary again. Bucky's eyes tightened suspiciously. Why was a man who claimed to be a god afraid of lightning? He stepped away from the bulkhead. Romanov let him; she didn't say anything else. He didn't want her to. He wanted to bury his grief for another good while.

 

'Why are you afraid of lightning?' he demanded. Loki eyed him before scanning the skies as best he could from his seat as a prisoner.

 

'I’m not overly fond of what follows,' he said. Bucky thought back to the myths he’d glanced at when trying to decide if the Red Skull was genuinely harnessing a godlike power or if he had found some science that seemed truly inexplicable. He’d given up on it pretty quickly. At the end of the day, it hadn’t mattered if Norse gods existed; it mattered if Schmidt could win.

 

'What, is the God of Thunder gonna come down on us?' Bucky asked sarcastically. He wasn’t even sure he believed SHIELD when they told him Loki had come from another planet. It had seemed too extraordinary. Something clunked, tilting the ship enough for Bucky to steady himself on the bulkhead. They all looked at the ceiling.

 

'God of Thunder, coming down,' Tony chimed. He grabbed his helmet. Bucky hauled Loki out of his seatbelt. He dragged the god by his lapel to the front of the ship, far from the hatch Tony had opened. He shoved the god back, between two struts in the metal and nearly out of sight.

 

’Stay behind me,' he told Loki. Loki looked shocked that the same Captain America he’d taunted so viscerally was now using himself as a shield for his protection. Bucky could hardly believe it himself. He thought being a prisoner of a human was bad enough for a god; at the very least, he should be safe while in custody. Sure enough, an enormous man landed on the hatch Tony had opened, cape billowing behind him. Holy shit, Bucky thought, he was wearing a fucking cape, like a damned cartoon character. He supposed his own outfit wasn’t much better.

 

'Stark, close the hatch,' he ordered. Tony’s glowing blue eyes turned to him, but he did as he was told. That trapped their guest pretty efficiently inside, and by the look of it, he knew it. 'I’m Captain Barnes,' he said with a greeting nod. 'You’ve landed without permission on my ship.' The blond man stood, tall and broad. He wore ornate, strange armour and he did look one hell of a lot like the illustrations from those old, Norse bibles.

 

'I am Thor, son of Odin,' he boomed. 'I do not need your permission to reclaim my brother.'

 

'Unfortunately, that’s not true,' Bucky said. 'Agent Romanov, remind me how many of our brothers and sisters Loki has killed over the last two days.'

 

'Over eighty people are dead,' she said. Thor met her eye. He bowed his head momentarily. Bucky noted the hammer at his side. He didn’t remember anything about a hammer in his too cursory research, but he bet it packed an unnatural wallop.

 

'For that, I am sorry,' Thor said. 'But Loki is of Asgard. He will pay for his crimes there.'

 

'I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Cape Town, but he’s already been arrested here,' Tony said smugly. ‘Does your mother know you’re wearing her curtains?’ Thor turned to him, stalking in the small space of the plane.

 

'This is beyond you, metal man,' Thor snapped. 'Loki will face Asgardian justice.'

 

'The people he killed were of Earth,' Bucky said. He mimicked Thor’s word choice to get his point across. He had had enough of this for today. He was tired. His heart hurt, for all he had told it to stop. He wanted to go home, or as close as he could get. 'Their justice belongs here. I welcome you to help us get it for them.'

 

'Frankly, if he gives up the Tesseract, he’s all yours,' Romanov said from beside Bucky.

 

'I need the Tesseract to bring him home,' Thor said. 'It is a power too great for this world. It will be safer on Asgard.'

 

'With the gods who lost it in the first place?' Tony asked. 'It hardly seems like you can keep much of anything safe.' Thor turned to him, seething. His fist tightened on the grip of the hammer he held. Bucky cut in to draw his attention off Tony, who of course would keep trying to irritate the man until he smashed something with that hammer, and with Bucky’s luck, crashed the plane and killed him a second time.

 

'There’s only one God,' he said. Thor looked at Bucky at that, away from Tony and loosening the grip he had on his hammer. 'I’m pretty sure He doesn’t dress like you.' He cracked a grin, even tho it felt incredibly false. He was sure it looked it too, if Tony’s split-second of concern was any indication. Thor stepped towards him, and Bucky met his steps. He wasn’t going to be cowed like Loki had cowed him. He couldn’t lose control like that again, not with two potential unfriendlies in the jet.

 

'Do I look to be in a gaming mood?' Thor demanded.

 

'I’m not playing,’ Bucky replied. ‘We’re going back to our base. If you want to take your brother home, you’ll have to ask Director Fury. He’s the man who gave the order for Loki’s arrest. You’re welcome to share our ride; we'll take you right to him.' Thor glared at his brother for a long time, then sighed heavily. He stuck a hand out for Bucky to shake. Bucky took it. Thor clasped his forearm with a strength that matched his well.

 

'Thank you, Captain,' he said. 'I am sorry for all the havoc this has caused. I have a fondness for Earth. I do not wish to see it ruled or destroyed by my brother in his time of strife. You stopped him before I could arrive to do the same. I suppose I should thank you for that as well.'

 

'No need,' Bucky said. He turned, moving back to where he'd pressed Loki into relative safety. He shoved Loki towards his brother. 'Here,' he said. 'Strap him in. The storm you raised up might get a little bumpy.' Thor clapped a giant hand against his younger brother’s neck. Loki seemed entirely unappreciative. Tony’s faceplate lifted as he moved past Thor and Loki.

 

'I thought you dead,' Thor told his brother, trying to move him to the seats Bucky had gestured to. Loki had gone easily into their ship to begin, but he resisted his brother as much as he could in the small space of the quinjet.

 

'Is it a good idea to let those two play house right now, Cap?' Tony asked quietly.

 

'I have to agree with Stark,' she said. 'I don’t like the idea of having two Asgardians in our jet.'

 

'I like it better than taking on the God of Thunder,' Bucky pointed out. 'It's better to play together than fight each other. Loki will be secured when we reach the helicarrier. Fury will decide whether or not to release him to Asgard.'

 

'So now that someone else is supervising our prisoner,' Tony said as Thor and Loki bickered behind them, 'are you gonna tell us what he said to get you so glower-y?' Bucky glared at Tony. 'What? Black Widow has already asked; why can't I?' Bucky looked at the gods in the back of the plane. He stared at Loki, who was now as petulant as a small child, reprimanded by his older brother.

 

'How did he know?' Bucky asked instead. 'How could he possibly have known? No one then knew.' Romanov sighed.

 

'He's a trickster god,' she said. 'He knows more than us. He can probably think quicker than us. Everything out of his mouth is either lie or manipulation.'

 

'Not everything,' Bucky admitted. He leaned an arm back up on the bulkhead, watching Thor beg his brother to see reason. 'He was right about one thing.'

 

'What's that?' Tony asked. Bucky sighed. His anger was gone. He felt numb. The chill of ice lingering all thru him had returned. He flexed his fingers in the restrictive gloves, trying to warm them.

 

'My best friend did die screaming,' Bucky said, almost a whisper. 'That fact does keep me up at night. It was my fault and I'm selfish enough to hope he didn't think that before he hit the bottom of the mountain.' He pushed off the bulkhead. 'See if the pilot can get us there any faster,' he asked Romanov. She folded herself into her gunner' chair immediately. He felt the jet speed up, not by a lot, but enough. He moved past Tony, needing to twist his shoulders to creep by. He sat heavily at the very back of the jet. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes.

^^^

‘Captain Barnes, may I ask you for a favour?’ Agent Coulson asked as Tony and Banner left for the lab. Bucky stifled a sigh. He wanted to stick by the sides of the only ones he trusted on the ship; he didn’t want to stay on the bridge with staring SHIELD agents and Fury.

‘Of course,’ he said however, because he didn’t really have a good enough reason to be rude. ‘What can I do for you?’ Coulson smiled nervously.

‘I have this collection,’ he began. Oh, no, Bucky thought. ‘Captain America trading cards, all vintage. I was wondering if I could ask you to sign them for me, after all this is settled. I’m not going to sell them, don’t worry, altho your signature would increase their value exponentially. You’ve never signed one of the cards before. I guess they printed them when you were in Europe, or after you, uh.’ Coulson cleared his throat slightly.

‘I can sign them now, if you want,’ Bucky offered, wanting to just get it over with. Coulson looked thrilled beyond belief.

‘They’re in my locker,’ he admitted. ‘They’re near-mint, so I don’t just carry them around.’

‘Of course not,’ Bucky agreed. Coulson didn’t pick up the sarcasm. Bucky could be subtle at times.

‘I’ll be driving you back to Stark Tower when we reach the mainland,’ Coulson said. ‘Could I bring them to you then? I’ll have a Sharpie for you.’ Bucky didn’t know what a Sharpie was, but he assumed it was a type of pen. He nodded, and clapped Coulson on the shoulder. The agent beamed at him. God, that was weird.  

He left the bridge, making his way to the labs Tony and Banner had gone to. As the door of the lab slipped open, Bucky realised he was beginning to resent the constant array of automatic doors in his life. When he’d first been serumed up, he’d had to adjust to his new strength quickly to not constantly rip doors off their hinges. He felt like he was losing that tenuous muscle memory; he’d forget himself again and break the first real door he saw.

‘Well, I promise a stress-free environment,’ Tony was saying as the door slid shut behind Bucky. ‘No tension. No surprises.’ Tony stabbed Banner with a sharp, thin instrument, and Banner jumped at the little shock it gave him, making a pained noise.

‘Really, Tony?’ Bucky said. Tony rolled his eyes at him. Banner held his hip, staring at Tony like he had three heads.

‘You really have got a lid on it, haven't you?’ Tony asked Banner, impressed. ‘What's your secret? Mellow jazz? Bongo drums? Huge bag of weed?’

‘Is it a good idea to stab someone who might explode and try to rip the ship apart? I trust you, Doctor Banner, but it’s not fair to test him like that, Tony,’ Bucky said. ‘I oughta dress you down.’ Banner waved him off.

‘No, no, it’s all right,’ Banner promised. ‘I wouldn’t have come aboard if I couldn’t handle pointy things.’ Tony rounded the table Banner stood behind, going back to his own computer display and tossing down the poker he’d stabbed Banner with.

‘You’re tiptoeing, Big Man,’ Tony said. ‘You need to strut.’

‘Would you focus?’ Bucky asked Tony. ‘Find the Cube so we can get the hell out of here.’

‘You think I'm not focused?’ Tony demanded. ‘You know what I’m focused on? Why did Fury call us in and why now? Why not before? What isn't he telling us?’ Bucky shrugged. ‘I can't do the equation unless I have all the variables.’

‘I think a bigger variable than Fury’s lying is Loki,’ Bucky said heavily. ‘We know Fury’s lying to keep us here and to get us to work for SHIELD. Easy. What we don’t know is what the hell Loki is up to. I don’t think that he’s really surrendered.’

‘Yeah, you’ve said,’ Tony replied. ‘Didn’t we decide to focus on other things back there, Cap?’

‘Sure,’ Bucky agreed, even if he hadn’t agreed to anything, not even really staying aboard after they locked Loki up. SHIELD had mentioned interrogation, in whispers where they thought he couldn’t hear, and Bucky felt sick at the idea someone might be tortured on this ship, while he was onboard, while he was mostly unable to stop it. He’d leaned in and mentioned his concern to Thor. The man was protective enough of his homicidal little brother to tell Bruce off for speaking poorly of him; he wouldn’t allow anything below board to happen either. It was the best Bucky could do while sticking by the sides of those he trusted on the ship.

‘Why can they use any camera they want?’ he asked Tony. Bruce looked at him oddly. Bucky shrugged. ‘I’ve got two whole cameras in my locker, on that telephone you gave me. If they can just turn people's telephones on, doesn’t that use the average citizen as a spy without their consent?’

‘I wouldn’t phrase it that way,’ Tony hedged, ‘but I was alive for the exponential increase in technological know-how of the last few decades. You’re basically not wrong.’

‘I don’t think it’s right either,’ Banner said, ‘to access anyone’s technology like that.’

‘Isn’t it private property?’ Bucky asked. ‘Don’t people care about the government sticking its nose literally into their pockets? Isn’t it just like the bugs in that holding room? Why can the government do all this? For our security? That’s bullshit, if you pardon my French.’

‘It’s incredible to see ideals of justice from a pre-Patriot Act American,’ Tony told Bruce, who laughed in agreement. ‘It’s refreshing, really.’

‘I’m going to make a list of things to look up,’ Bucky grumbled. ‘I need a set of encyclopedias.'

‘You need to learn to Google,’ Tony corrected. If it weren’t for the serum, Bucky would feel a headache coming on. ‘And come on, you got Fury’s monkey joke. Credit where credit’s due.’ Bruce rounded the table at the end of the lab, eyeing Loki’s sceptre. Bucky didn’t know if the thing were magic, or unexplained science, or if there was a difference between the two, but he knew the thing fired and resounded against his shield in the exact same way HYDRA guns had during the war, even if it hadn’t vaporized Loki. It was too similar to be anything but.

‘I don’t trust these people,’ Bucky said. He hated saying it, especially on their ship where they no doubt heard him. ‘There’s something they’re not telling us.’

‘I really thought you’d have to be sold on that fact,’ Tony said as he tapped away at glass screens. Banner plugged a sensor of sorts into a port below the tabletop, perfectly at home in the high-tech room. Bucky sat on a stool, staring at the black box and flashing screen Stark had brought from the Tower, uncomfortable in his stupid combat boots and the stupidly tight seat of his uniform.

'They lied to me,' Bucky said. 'You were the first person in this millennium to say anything honest to me, not any of them. So, no, I don't need to be sold on their untrustworthiness.'

'Well, I hope you don't need to be sold on this,' Tony said, tapping a screen. The monitor in front of Bucky beeped for his attention. ‘Voila.’

'Tony,' Bruce complained mildly. 'Was that smart?' Bucky stared at the information on the screen, which might have been written in the English alphabet but had enough of modern technology in it to be Greek to him.

‘It was genius, actually,’ Tony corrected.

'What is this?' asked Bucky, a fully grown man, for the fifteenth time that day. He pointed at the screen.

'I'm hacking into their mainframe,' Tony replied, offering him a bag of God damn blueberries. Bucky buried his face in his hands, resisting the urge to scream.

'What is that?' he asked again. Tony and his berries retreated.

'Their computer,' Bruce told him simply. 'Tony is going to break into a very, very, _very_ sophisticated vault of a computer remotely in under, what, six hours? Eight?'

'No, no,' Tony corrected. 'This baby will be done any minute now. Two hours more, tops.'

'So, what, you'll know everything they know?' Bucky asked.

'We will have virtually every secret SHIELD has,' Tony agreed. 'They keep some things offline, of course, probably the doozies from back in the day. Remind me what the Nazis used the Tesseract for.'

'Well, not a lot,' Bucky said. He lifted his face out of his hands. 'Hitler's command lost confidence with HYDRA because they were so focused on the Cube. The Nazis never had control of it; they thought it was just a myth, just a dumb piece of rock or crystal. HYDRA were the ones who made incredibly terrifying weapons with it; they could vaporize a field of men with a single rifle. The weapons in the plane I crashed relied on the Cube's energy, not atomic energy, or at least not in the same way the bombs we dropped on Japan did. I mean, I'm not a scientist. I don't know how it works, but I know it can create the worst evil this world has ever seen.'

'Do you think SHIELD could recreate those weapons?' Bruce asked. Bucky nodded, without meeting that level and cognizant gaze. Banner sighed heavily. He straightened from where he'd leant against the counter, tapping at screens once again.

‘What about you? You filled with hope and relaxation, Big Guy?’ Banner looked at Tony over his glasses, glancing at Bucky for a second as if for confirmation of the question.

‘Um, no,’ he said. ‘But I just wanna finish my work here—’

‘Doctor?’ Bucky pressed. ‘If you don’t trust Fury, why are you here?’ Bruce hesitated.

'They asked nicely this time,' Bruce said. 'They haven't always. I'm also sure asking nicely was just a precursor to asking with weapons, which would have been bad for everyone.' Bucky didn't know what to say to that, nor did he really know who these people were. He realised that the crewmen were only mostly American. He'd heard other languages scattered thru the halls; Agent Romanov was from as far away as Russia. Over what people did this helicarrier hold dominion? Who did these people answer to, when threatening scientists? What trust of what citizens justified this vaguely paramilitary operation?

‘Your new building,’ Bruce said to Tony, as he turned the image of a knob on the screen, letting the computer run the search mostly automatedly, or so it seemed to Bucky. ‘It's powered by arc reactors, a self-sustaining energy source. That building will run itself for what, a year?’ Tony shrugged, unbothered by the skepticism in Banner’s voice.

‘It’s only a prototype,’ he said. Bucky remembered Howard’s prototypes. The building ran better than most of them. Bucky had spent the last week there; nothing had thrown sparks or burst into flames. ‘I’m kind of the only name in clean energy, right now, is what he’s getting at.’ Bucky nodded, absorbing that.

‘So why weren’t you brought in on the Cube project, if they’re using it for energy?’ Bucky asked, frowning. Bruce looked away. ‘Oh. Hm. To me, that makes weapons the other choice for the Cube. Do people who know what's possible nowadays disagree?'

'No, we do not,' Tony replied. ‘They’re sure as hell not trying for space travel.’

‘I don’t know why SHIELD is trying to claim they’re getting into the energy game in the first place,’ Banner put in. He pulled off his glasses. ‘Besides, what Loki said? ‘A warm light for all mankind to share'? He wasn’t talking to Fury about the Cube. He knew you’d be listening in.' Bruce pointed with the arms of his glasses, right at Tony. 'Even if Barton didn’t tell him about it, it’s been all over the news.’

‘Stark Tower would be rather impressive target,’ Tony agreed. ‘Well, I’ll have to look into that when we get back to land.'

'Deal with it now,' Bucky snapped. Tony scoffed at him thru a transparent monitor.

'Would you like to explain how you expect Loki to escape the cage which was built to contain—no offense, doc—the Hulk of all things?’ Tony asked. Bucky shrugged, because the Hulk was an impressive beast. Tony kept talking, about teraflops, whatever those were, and Bucky tuned him out. Loki was crazy, like Bruce had said; you could smell it on him. The Hulk's cell was apparently indestructible. Loki had known more than was possible about Steve; it made sense to assume he knew where he’d be locked up. Why would someone who hadn't surrendered stay in an indestructible cage on purpose? What could be the end game of trapping yourself in a cage meant for something so dangerous—

‘The Hulk,’ Bucky said, realization hitting him like bricks. Banner and Stark looked over at him, stilling their science. ‘Fellas, Loki wants to use the Hulk to take down the ship.’

‘What?’ Tony said, and Bucky turned at the noise of the lab doors opening. Natasha strolled in, and he stood.

‘The Hulk,’ he said. She frowned at him.

‘I know,’ she replied. ‘Loki just told me. How do you know?’

‘I just realised,’ he replied. 'You know all this better than the three of us; what's our play?'

'Um, Captain,' Tony chimed as Bruce protested the idea that he was in play at all. 'I think SHIELD anticipated you would, you know, be team captain.' Bucky felt irritation prickle hot under his skin at that, unnaturally sharp. 'I thought you were a soldier. I didn't realize you relied on others for ideas. Weren't you a hero?'

'I don't work for these people,' Buck snapped, trying very, very hard not to poke at Tony's soft spots in return like something just outside himself begged him to. 'And a good captain doesn't make a plan when he doesn't know the layout of the battleship, Tony. Romanov, do you have a plan?'

'Yes,' she said immediately. Before Bucky could demand it, an explosion ripped thru the lab. It knocked him hard; he landed maybe five feet back, his head smashing against the floor.

Alarms began blaring. Bucky coughed from the smoke, rolling to his feet. Tony lay not far from him, conscious and mostly unhurt. Romanov and Banner had been blown into a loading bay below. Bucky grabbed his arms, hauling him up.

‘I’m making a plan,’ he said. ‘Put on the suit!’

^^^

‘Engine three,’ Tony said as they ran down the hall. Romanov had checked in; Bucky wasn’t sure she was genuinely OK alone. He had to imagine the blast had in fact triggered the Hulk. He didn’t like leaving her alone to deal with that. She had claimed she could handle it; he had to believe her and do what he could elsewhere. ‘I’ll meet you there.’ Bucky nodded, running along hallways to the third engine. He reached the door labelled three; someone was banging on the other side, barely audible over the noise of chaos in the ship. The door was jammed. Bucky yanked with his superhuman strength, and the jammed metal gave way with a shriek of steel. Three SHIELD agents were inside, one clearly injured. Bucky helped the other two get the injured man over the precipice of the doorway and then rushed past them. A huge section of the ship had been blown away, wind whipping at his hair. Bucky peered over the ledge for Iron Man, hating the horrified twist of his stomach as he saw the ocean churning thousands of feet below him. He exhaled hard, his cheeks puffing out with the force of the breath which was meant to be calming. It wasn’t.

‘I’m here!’ he reported.

Iron Man swooped across the sky, and Bucky stepped further into the relative safety of the blasted hull. He watched Tony and allowed himself a moment to be amazed at the grace with which Tony directed himself thru the air. Bucky hadn’t even ever been to jump school; flying like that amazed him. He couldn’t imagine it.

‘I gotta get this super conducting cooling system back online before I can access the rotors and work on dislodging the debris,’ Tony called over the coms. ‘I need you to get to that engine control panel and tell me which relays are in overload position.’ Bucky turned the vague direction Tony gestured before disappearing from view of the open hull. He took another moment to thank God that things were clearly labelled in what was left of the engine room.

The stairs to the upper gangway were gone, but the gangway was only about fifteen feet up. He leapt, grabbing the remains of an I bar and swinging over open air. He landed easily.

Bucky yanked the control panel open, and froze when he saw what was inside. He threw one hand in the air; he’d expected knobs or gauges or something, but the panel was all lights and wires. It looked like the innards of one of the computers Tony was building in his tower workroom.

‘What’s it look like in there?’ Tony asked, the sounds of clanking and welding in the background of his com. Bucky shook his head.

‘It probably runs on electricity,’ he replied, useless. Back in the day, he had been handy with mechanics, could even fix a radio. This was beyond him. He hated it, and he hated the swell of anger at his own incompetence.

‘Well, you’re not wrong,’ Tony offered. ‘Are things flashing red or yellow? Mix of the two?’

‘All red,’ Bucky said with confidence.

‘OK, there should be six main, uh, cords, right? Lighting up,’ Tony called. ‘Beneath them is another cord; should be all black. Reset that one; unplug, replug. It’s not ideal, but it’ll get the job done.’

‘We have a perimeter breach,’ someone shouted over the Tannoy of the ship. ‘Hostiles are in SHIELD uniform. Call outs at every junction.’ Bucky shook his head; things were heating up too quickly for his liking.

‘’S all yellow,’ Bucky said, when he had reset the panel. ‘That good?’

‘That’s awesome,’ Tony promised.

‘What’s next?’ Bucky asked, sliding the panel shut. He crept to the edge again and tried to spot Tony. He could hear, over the roar of the wind and the alarms still blaring behind him, clanking and blasting as Tony cleared debris and fuselage from the rotors.

‘Even when I’ve cleared the rotors, this thing won't re-engage without a jump. I'm gonna have to get in there and push,’ Tony told him. Bucky looked at the engine, and imagined how fast those blades had to spin.

‘You’ll get sliced up when that thing gets going,’ he pointed out.

‘The stator control unit can reverse the polarity long enough to disengage maglev—’

‘Tony! What makes you think I can understand that?’ Bucky snapped, his hand going to the com unit in his ear.

'You see that red lever?' Tony tried. 'If you pull it on my mark, I’ll have enough time to slip out of the way.’ Bucky looked for a red lever. It was across another huge gaping hole in engine room flooring.

‘God damn it,’ Bucky said to himself. He jumped, landing on the inner edge of the gangway, grabbing the rail for balance. It shifted slightly as Bucky’s boots touched the grated floor, and for a terrifying second he thought that for the second time in his life, a railing would give way and destroy him. It held and he pressed his hands to the metal wall, close as he could get to the wall and away from the open air and fall to water. His heart pounded harder than it ever had. ‘I’m here,’ he called.

‘Moving in,’ Tony replied.

Bucky saw movement out of the corner of his eye. He saw SHIELD uniforms, but knew that didn’t mean much. He watched, and one of the men tossed a grenade toward the engine, toward Tony. Without thinking, he flung himself into the air. He batted the grenade downwards; it detonated below him with little effect. He landed on the same gangway as the insurgents; he grabbed at the above gangway, swinging. Bucky hit the man who had thrown the grenade, square in the jaw and hopefully not hard enough to kill him. He kicked the second one, who had knelt behind his comrade, intending to cover him with suppressive fire. Bucky no doubt shattered his collarbone; he stayed down.

A third masked man fired at him from the doorway. Bucky threw one of the rifles at him as hard as he could. He missed, but bought himself enough time to leap back into position, grabbing another firearm and firing back. He was at no angle to be effective. He had no cover up by the red lever; he was completely exposed as he waited for Tony's mark.

‘Stark! We’re losing altitude!’ Fury called over the coms.

‘Yep, I noticed,’ Tony said.

The insurgent returned fire, too close for comfort, and Bucky stepped back, eyes shut instinctually as bullets pinged around his head.

A loose piece of grating found its way under his boot, slipping from underneath him. The ship tilted as it suddenly began losing altitude. Bucky fell into open air— _this was it; this was how he died_ —and his hand wrapped around a carbon fibre cord, thick and strong enough to support his weight. His shoulder snapped painfully as he held tight. Desperately, he grabbed with his other hand, dangling over the water.

He tried to call out to Tony as he tried to haul himself back into the ship, but his voice stuck in his throat. He was panicking and he hated it; he hated the ice in his veins as he battered about in the wind. He was going to _fucking_ _die_ like this, dangling, desperate and afraid. He didn’t want to fall; he didn’t want to drown again. He didn’t want to die like this.

‘Cap, hit the lever!’ Tony ordered. Bucky knew he was out of time. He used that fact to force himself to move faster, get grounded, to get inside, to try to grapple at the grating with his restrictive gloves and bullets still zinging past. One grazed over his leg. He kept moving. ‘Now!’ A new source of banging began not long after that; Bucky imagined Tony’s suit battering about the turbine like he’d been battering in the air. He yanked blindly, pulling the lever ninety degrees. The banging stopped and the ship dipped for a moment before the rotors got back up to speed. The bullets stopped pinging seconds after. The alarms had stopped inside. It seemed deadly quiet, even with the sound of flames and scraping metal and the wind still whipping at Bucky's hair, a sick reminder of how close he'd come to blowing away in that wind.

‘Iron Man, you copy?’ he called, finally touching his com unit. He sounded shaky, even to his own ears. Tony gave an affirmative, as HIll’s voice declared Loki and his men had loaded onto a jet and taken back off. Bucky laid on the floor of the unstable gangway, panting. He was alive. He was still alive. He couldn't believe it. He was too shocked to even be relieved. ‘The rest of the team, check in, now.’ Romanov replied immediately; no one followed her. "Team, check in now,' he repeated.

‘Thor and Banner are both gone,’ Hill told him. ‘We are trying to track them, but most of our systems are down.’ Bucky closed his eyes. Two men were missing, out of the five that had rushed from the lab and the bridge to attend to this crisis. That was not acceptable. He had to do better, somehow, next time. He had to.

‘By the way,’ Nat’s exhausted voice chimed after a moment. ‘None of that was a part of the plan I was going to suggest.’

^^^

Both Banner and Thor had dropped off the helicarrier during the fight. The pilot who’d engaged the Hulk had been fished out of the ocean already; they hadn’t found where the Hulk must have landed. Thor had been locked in the Hulk-proof cage and dropped above land. Bucky was sure Thor would find a way back to them. He still wasn’t sure if he was an alien or if there really was more than one god, but he didn’t think, either way, he could be taken out so easily.

‘These were in Phil Coulson's jacket,’ Fury said. He tossed a small pile of bloodied cards across the sleek glass of the command table. Bucky reached out and picked one up. Coulson had had them in his locker; Fury was lying, like it was nothing. Tony’s jaw tensed at the lie, even tho he probably bought it as fact. Earlier, Bucky had said at least Fury’s lies came with clear motivation; he could see this one as clear as the red on the card. The foxed edge was sticky with blood, or at least with red, the near-mint condition completely ruined. He supposed it didn’t matter now, since their collector was dead. ‘Guess he never did get you to sign them.’

Bucky stared at the cartoon version of himself, with his shield on one arm and a cheeky salute on the other. He still didn’t understand the sensationalism surrounding the character, but he had to admit he understood the appeal of a hero that actually could represent a pure will and a real good. He understood, looking over the pile of cards, the attraction of a hero bolstered by idealism, fighting against an enemy like HYDRA that allowed some moral absolutes. It was why he had fallen in love with Steve, after all. Loki had been right about that too. The only difference between Steve and Captain America was that Bucky had been given the muscle to back up his ideals. Bucky had been given a chance to be a hero. Was he really going to squander that now? Because of his own grief, he’d let the world burn at the hands of Loki?

Steve wouldn’t. Steve would have fought, no matter his reservations or fear, because it was the right thing to do. There was a bully after the world. Steve would go after him with all he had.

  
‘We're dead in the air up here. Our communications, location of the cube, Banner, Thor. I got nothing for you. Lost my one good eye. Maybe I had that coming,’ Fury mused, leaning on the table. Bucky tossed the card down and the bloody edge streaked the glass. He pushed his fist against his mouth, thinking about Coulson’s eager request for him to sign these stupid cards. Coulson had lied to him just as much as the rest of SHIELD, but he’d at least believed he was doing the right thing. If he really loved the dumbass on those cards so much, he must have thought he could defend the world like Captain America did.

Fury began pacing the length of the table, rounding it towards Bucky. ‘Yes, we were going to build an arsenal with the Tesseract,’ he admitted. Bucky kept his eyes on the streaks of blood on the table. ‘I never put all my chips on that number though, because I was playing something even riskier. There was an idea—Stark knows this—called the Avengers Initiative.’ Bucky turned his chair a bit to look at his friend. Tony wouldn’t look at him; he was staring over the bridge and breathing very deliberately. ‘The idea was to bring together a group of remarkable people, see if they could become something more. See if they could work together when we needed them to, to fight the battles that we never could. Phil Coulson died still believing in that idea, in heroes.’ Fury stopped between them, touching the back of one of the command chairs. Tony stood up, and for a moment Bucky thought he might say something. He stormed off. Bucky watched him go.

‘Well,’ Fury said, ‘it’s an old fashioned notion.’

^^^

Bucky remembered that Pepper had greeted Coulson so warmly. They must have been friends. Even if Tony trusted SHIELD as far as he could throw the helicarrier without the suit, Bucky had to imagine any friend of Pepper’s was a friend of his. That was how Bucky had ended up at Stark Tower, after all, that big, ugly monument to one man’s ego. It seemed too appropriate.

It was easy to find Tony, once Bucky started looking. He was in the same room Coulson had died in, staring at the closed circular hatch. Bucky allowed him his space, leaning against a railing on another ramp to the absent cage. Tony had to have heard his red boots against the gangway; he didn’t turn or look over. Bucky stared at his feet, crossed at the ankles as he leaned and waited.

‘I figure you and I gotta be upfront with each other, at the very least,’ Bucky said after a long moment. ‘Coulson kept the cards in his locker. Too valuable to carry around like that. Fury wants us to pull together. We took a hit, a hard one. That means it’s time to close rank.’

Tony didn’t reply. He turned from the hatch and paced back towards the wall. Bucky could see as easily as Tony could the rinsed-out stain of Coulson’s blood. He looked up when Tony finally spoke.

‘Is that all this death is good for?’ Tony asked. ‘To make us close rank?’

‘Death isn’t good for anything,’ Bucky told him. ‘It just rips apart the living.’ Tony sighed. Bucky looked back down at his feet. ‘Was he married?’

‘No,’ Tony said. ‘There was, uh, a cellist, I think. I was gonna fly him out to visit her next week.’  
  
‘I'm sorry. He seemed like a good man,’ Bucky said lamely. He wasn’t really sure if Coulson had been a good man or not, but he’d been Pepper’s friend, probably Tony’s too. That was all that mattered now that he was gone. ‘Is this the first time you’ve lost a soldier?’

‘We are not soldiers,’ Tony snapped. Bucky looked up at that. Tony shook with anger; his hands were in fists at his sides. ‘I'm not marching to Fury's fife.’

‘I’m not either,’ Bucky said. ‘But think about it. What did Loki make this?’

‘Personal,’ Tony said easily. ‘He hit us right where we live. He wanted to, what, divide and conquer?’

‘Yeah, that’s great, but that’s not enough,’ Bucky said. ‘He wanted to tear us apart, but he needs more than that. He needs to beat us. He might have beat us for now, but we’ll regroup and come after him. He has to know that. He needs a power source strong enough for the Cube, and we need to find which one. You should start making a list—’

‘He doesn’t just want to beat us,’ Tony said. ‘He wants to be seen doing it. He wants the glory and the cheers; he needs an audience. He wants flowers and parades—’

‘He wants a monument with his name on it,’ Bucky put in. ‘He doesn’t have one, but you do.’ Tony stopped pacing and stared. ‘Is Stark Tower powerful enough for what he needs?’ Bucky asked.

‘Son of a bitch,’ Tony said. He started moving, and Bucky followed.

‘Get your suit,’ Bucky ordered as they made their way to a hangar. ‘Try to get to the Tower quicker than I can. I don't know if it's possible to stall, but try.'

'I'm not going to stall him,' Tony growled. 'I'm going to threaten him. I'm going to tell him to pack up or get beaten down.' Bucky liked the sound of that.

'I’ll get Agent Romanov,' Bucky said, 'and whoever else she can vouch for.’

‘Do you trust Black Widow?’ Tony asked. Bucky shrugged.

‘She took on the Hulk and kept going,’ he said. ‘I trust she’ll get the job done. Right now, that’s about all we can hope for. You and I won’t be enough.’

‘Bruce is gonna come thru, you know,’ Tony said. ‘He’ll wake up and be back before you can say _no, he won’t_.’

‘I wouldn’t say that,’ Bucky promised. ‘I hope you’re right.’

‘I hope you know what you’re doing, Cap,’ Tony said as they split off at a juncture. Bucky eyed the blast marks from a concussion grenade and the evidence of a firefight along the walls.

‘So do I.’

^^^

Loki shot out one of the engines of the quinjet. Of course he did. They were plummeting. Bucky was holding on for dear life, his enhanced strength clinging on, the only thing keeping him from buffeting around in the plane like a rag doll. His hands were covered in cold sweat inside his gloves. The leather gave him enough tack to keep his grip on the ceiling. Barton did his best to ease their landing, but he was appropriately more concerned with avoiding buildings than he was avoiding tossing Bucky around like the last raisin in a ration box. He clung and tried to will himself to be less terrified. He failed.

They landed with an impressive gouge in the concrete. Bucky let himself take a moment to gather his frayed nerves as Barton and Romanov tore off their five-point harnesses. He was fucking done with planes. This was the third one in the last week that had nearly killed him. He was fucking done. People in his day took the fucking train and he’d take the fucking train to the next bullshit op SHIELD tried to drag him on. There was a God damned army from outer space raining down on his hometown. At no point had he signed up for this.

‘Did we kill anyone on the way down?’ Bucky asked.

‘Maybe in the building we hit,’ Barton called back. ‘But we didn’t land on anybody.’ Barton opened the back door and they ran out. Sirens roared and a dozen cars already lay damaged and abandoned all around. They’d ripped open a private square, but there were no tracks of red blood under them, just black soot.

‘We’ve gotta get back up there,’ Bucky said as they ran. His companions stumbled to a stop in front of Grand Central; when Bucky followed their gaze, he understood why.

An enormous, gigantic body of metal and bone flowed down from the gaping hole in the sky. It swam thru the air like Bucky imagined whales swum the ocean, almost graceful if not for the smashes of rock and brick and steel that fell as it collided with buildings, met with screams down below. Sparks spouted along its prominent ribs; alien soldiers fell out, dropping on cables and breaking thru windows. ‘Oh, my God. Tony, are you seeing this?’ he called.

‘I'm seeing, still working on believing,’ he promised. Bucky huffed out a breath; at least Tony was himself. Not everything was topsy turvy. ‘Where's Banner? Has he shown up yet?’

‘Not yet,’ Bucky said. He wasn’t sure Banner would show up, but he sure hoped Tony was right to have faith in him.

‘Keep me posted,’ Tony asked.

‘Find a way to take down that crate and I will,’ Bucky said.

‘You betcha,’ Tony replied.

‘There are civilians trapped in those buildings,’ Barton said.

‘There are civilians trapped everywhere,’ Bucky agreed, as they took cover from showering debris and the fire of Chitauri weapons. ‘They’re fish in a barrel down there.’

‘Go,’ Romanov said, unholstering her Glocks. ‘We got it up here.’ Bucky believed her, but he glanced at Barton.

‘Can you hold them here?’ he asked.

‘Captain,’ Barton began, ‘it would be my genuine pleasure.’ Bucky nodded, and rose. He leapt off the causeway and ran along the eleven twenty three bus. He dropped onto an SUV, which exploded behind him, catapulting him into the air. He used as much of the unexpected momentum as he could and rolled when he landed, bits of debris and metal digging into the Kevlar across his back and shoulders. He kept running, faster than the fleeing civilians around him.

‘Does the Army know what's happening here?’ shouted a police sergeant. Bucky dodged the blast of a Chitauri weapon as he made his way to the men in charge.

‘Do we?!’ someone else shouted. Bucky couldn’t help but agree. The situation was truly insane, but he knew these streets; he’d grown up in them. Loki had pried at his broken heart. He’d also lead the fight to a place Bucky knew better than anywhere else. He leaped onto a police cruiser, his feet leaving dents on the roof of the already-compromised sedan as he knelt, a smaller target. The two cops in front of him gaped, staring at the garish colours in front of them. This uniform was the worst. He missed navy blue and practical components of red and white.

  
‘I need men in these buildings,’ he ordered, gesturing to the huge glass towers on either side. ‘There are people inside that can run into the line of fire. You take the civilians thru the basements or thru the subway; just keep them off the streets. I need a perimeter as far back as—’ He considered for half a second before deciding. ‘—As far back as Thirty Ninth.’

‘Why the hell should I take orders from you?’ the sergeant demanded. Bucky was about to snap that he was _Captain Fucking America_ , but an explosion too close behind him sounded instead. He saw the cops flinch back as he spun and stood.

A taxi blew and landed on its roof. The smaller bogeys which flew over dropped soldiers on them as they passed. He blocked the first shot; the Chitauri blasts rang against his shield more weakly than HYDRA weapons had, but stronger than ordinary bullets. Bucky backhanded an alien with his vibranium shield; it cracked the alien’s skull and felled the body. He blocked another shot and punched the shooter in the face. He flew backwards.

Bucky spun when he heard the almost-robotic whirl of another Chitauri behind him. He hit the third one hard enough to break its neck. He grabbed the gun arm of the one he’d punched, which had gotten up quicker than a human could have after taking one of his hits to attack him again, and brought his shield down. It sliced thru the bone-like skin of the alien, and he hit his shield straight out, knocking the final alien ten feet back. It smashed against another abandoned car, dead and still. He clutched the gun in his hand as the arm fell out—gruesome and twitching—and eyed the sergeant. He turned.

‘I need men in those buildings,’ he shouted into his radio. ‘Lead people down into basements and subways and away from the streets—!’ Satisfied that the police could establish a perimeter and continue evac, he made his way back to his team. The bus had been blown onto its side, empty of people. He had to run and jump, grabbing at the already-damaged cement of the causeway and arriving just in time to smash gunners away from Barton and Romanov. Lightning struck three aliens and Thor appeared just behind it. He straightened in pain. Bucky swept an eye over him; the god had been stabbed and was bleeding red at the abdomen.

‘The power surrounding the cube is impenetrable,’ he told Bucky. Bucky looked up at the balcony of Stark Tower; he appreciated being reported to, but he really had no idea how the hell he was supposed to know how to deal with a fucking door into space. The way it rippled and changed, he figured it wasn’t even a door thru to the space surrounding the planet or even past the moon people had been to; it was a door that cut out hundreds of millions of miles of distance.

‘Thor is right,’ Tony said thru the com system. ‘We gotta deal with these guys.’

  
‘How do we do this?’ Agent Romanov asked. Bucky shook his head to himself.

‘We do it together,’ he said simply. ‘As a team.’

‘I have unfinished business with Loki,’ Thor protested.

‘Yeah?’ Barton retorted. ‘Get in line.’

  
‘Roll up your flaps, you two,’ Bucky snapped. ‘Loki's gonna keep this fight focused on us and that's the only chance the LEOs have to evacuate the area successfully. Without Loki, and without us, these things could run wild. Containing the Chitauri is our priority. Closing the portal is the second. After that, we might take Loki out.’

‘He is still my brother,’ Thor said. Bucky met his eye, firm.

‘We might take Loki out,’ he repeated, sincerely sorry to say it. Thor didn’t break his gaze; he lowered his chin just an inch. He understood. Bucky was grateful. ‘We have Iron Man as air support, but he's gonna need us to—’ A small, badly tuned motor hummed closer and closer behind them. Bucky turned to check and sure enough it was Doctor Banner. ‘Tony, it’s Banner. Just like you said.’

‘Banner?’ Tony echoed. ‘I knew it. I told you!’

‘So,’ Banner said, stepping off the bike and engaging the kickstand amongst the rubble. It was a useless gesture. Bucky knew the next wave would knock the bike into the detruis and ash. ‘This all seems horrible.’

‘I’ve seen worse,’ Romanov told him. Bruce winced. ‘No, we could use a little worse.’

‘I’m bringing the party to you,’ Tony said. He rounded a corner and a space whale headed towards them. Bucky sighed.

‘I don’t see how that’s a party,’ Romanov remarked flatly, mostly to herself.

‘Doctor Banner, it’s time to suit up,’ Bucky said. ‘Get angry.’ Bruce stalked towards the low-swooping space whale in hot pursuit of Iron Man.

‘I’ll tell you a secret, Captain,’ Banner said, looking back as he turned green. ‘I’m always angry.’

^^^

‘Call it, Captain,’ Tony said as he landed in formation. Bucky watched two more space whales and a few dozen smaller ships pour out of that hole in space. The team waited behind him and Bucky couldn’t help but think of the Commandos. He couldn’t help but remember the men he’d fought so hard to get on his team: a Jewish medic, a coloured fella, two foreigners who fought with the same valour he did, and a guy _born in fucking Fresno so what was the problem?_. They’d stood like this before, against impossible odds and terrifying technology. This wasn’t so different, right? Seventy years later, sure, but they could do this. It was a different team, but they could do this. He could still do this.

‘Barton,’ he began. ‘I want you on that roof—’ He pointed to the building on the southeast corner of Park and Forty Seventh. ‘—eyes on everything. Call out patterns and strays. Tony, you got the perimeter; I don’t want anything across Eighth Ave or Lexington, or past Fifty Seventh Street. The police are manning Thirty Ninth, but they’ll need help. Anything gets more than three blocks outside those streets, you turn it back or you blast it down.’ Tony grabbed Barton by his Kevlar and took off. Bucky hoped he hadn’t spread them too thin; the avenues weren’t that far apart but Thirty Ninth was a ways from the edge of the Park. He didn’t think they could contain them in a smaller area, not easily, not when they swooped down so high from the door to space.

‘Thor, you've gotta cover that portal; slow them down,’ he ordered. ‘You've got the lightning. Light the bastards up.’ With a quick spin of his hammer, Thor took off without question.

‘You,’ he said, pointing at Romanov. ‘You’re with me. We’ll occupy them here as best we can.’ He turned to the angry green monster roaring at the Chitauri taunting him from buildings. He didn’t know how much he could expect in terms of tactics. ‘Hulk,’ he said simply. The beast jerked its head towards him like a dog hearing its name. Bucky hoped to God enough of Bruce was in there to be useful. He pointed at the Chitauri clinging to buildings and threatening to invade semi-evacuated office spaces. ‘Smash.’

  
‘Captain,’ Romanov said. She was the only one who hadn’t moved. Even the Hulk had leapt off immediately, snatching aliens off the sides of buildings and breaking them to bits. ‘None of this is gonna mean a damn thing if we don't close that portal.’

‘I certainly don’t know how we can touch it,’ Bucky admitted. ‘You heard Thor and Tony. It’s unbreachable.’

‘I have a plan,’ she said.

‘Romanov,’ he warned, and she continued, firing to peg an alien between the eyes. It dropped and its gun clattered to the ground.

‘Come on,’ she said, ducking for his shield to zing over her head and take out three behind her, bouncing back to him off a light post on the causeway. ‘You were gonna let me make a plan before. You owe me one.’

‘That’s not how this works,’ he said, unable to help himself. ‘But fine. How are you gonna get up there?’

‘I got a ride,’ she said, and pointed. He followed her finger. A small squadron of Chitauri pilots approached on their flying chariots.

‘That is a bad idea,’ he told her. ‘That is a truly moronic idea.’

‘I could use a boost,’ she admitted, not at all concerned. He had to imagine that was a facade, but he let her certainty assure him anyway. ‘You figure you can toss me thirty feet?’ He looked at her, then took eight steps back.

‘Straight up?’ he asked, watching the chariots as they approached. She glanced at the approaching ships and then nodded. ‘Are you sure about this?’ He tapped his shield twice and then pointed at a nearby red wreck of a car; she nodded. ‘Romanov.’

‘Yeah,’ she promised. ‘It's gonna be fun.’ She ran and stepped up onto the hood and roof of the car; she jumped down onto his shield and he launched her up into the air, flinging. He barely had time to make sure she made it before he came under fire again.

The Chitauri spoke in growls and roars and when Bucky severed their limbs, they threw sparks and green-grey fluid, not red, hot blood. He couldn’t decide if they were robot or people, and it bothered him. When he smashed in a head, when he used one of their own guns to blast them away, when Barton’s arrows struck a chariot and blew a ship, did they feel pain as they died? Was he disabling automatons of sorts? Was he killing?

Was he trying to murder them as desperately as they were him?

^^^

The Hulk dropped Iron Man’s body without much care. Bucky slid to his knees, skidding across the chalky asphalt. Thor rolled the body and ripped the face mask clean off the helmet. Bucky bent and listened, but there wasn’t any breath. He ripped off a vambrace and the palm and fingers of a glove fell away without it. He grabbed Tony’s wrist and pressed at three different, desperate angles, trying to find a pulse. He couldn't reach one. There wasn’t one. He searched for breath again, cursing, but Tony was gone. He didn't know what to do. He couldn't do anything. Bucky hit his fist into the ground. Bucky’s eyes prickled. God damn it. _God damn it_.

The Hulk looked at him, truly looked between Bucky and Tony. Bucky shook his head. The beast roared, leaning down and close to Tony’s face. The roar rattled Bucky’s enhanced eardrums, impossibly loud.

‘What the hell!’ Tony gasped, jolting awake. His very-dented suit prevented him from jolting very successfully. He looked about, truly panicked and Bucky broke his face into an exhausted smile. ‘What just happened? Please tell me nobody kissed me.’

‘Why would somebody kiss you?’ Bucky laughed, clapping his friend’s helmet in lieu of his cheeks. Tony swatted him away. His still-intact gauntlet clinked against the ashy ground when he gave up.

‘What, no CPR in your day? What happened?’ Tony asked. Bucky sunk onto his haunches, sitting and surveying the wreckage of his home. ‘What the hell happened? I was in fucking space.’

‘We won,’ he said. He sounded amazed even to his own ears. He sounded exhausted and sad in equal parts.

‘All right,’ Tony cheered weakly. ‘Yay. All right, good job, guys. Let’s—let’s not come in tomorrow. Let's just take a day.’ Bucky swiped a hand over the grime on his face, grinning at how fucking ridiculous Tony was. ‘Have you ever tried shawarma?’ he demanded, bumping Bucky’s knee with his bare hand even as he still couldn’t sit up. He peered at Thor. ‘There's a shawarma joint about two blocks from here. I don't know what it is, but I wanna try it.’

‘We're not finished yet,’ Thor said. ‘There is yet my brother.’ Bucky looked up at Thor, and he nodded. Part of him was relieved they wouldn’t have to kill Loki, or at least that it wasn’t looking like they would have to.

‘You good?’ Bucky asked Tony. He reached out with the hand Bucky had torn free of the armour. Bucky hauled him to his feet, taking the weight of the man and suit like it was nothing. ‘Come on, fellas. Let’s end this.’

^^^

Bucky ached. His whole body was sore. When he’d rushed into the bank, when he’d gone in to try to evacuate the hostages, one of the Chitauri had thrown the alien grenade at him; he’d curled behind his shield, which had protected him from the pineapple blast. It left the rest of him to be blown thru the double-paned bank window. He’d slammed across the roof of a car, collapsing the steel frame below him. He’d taken hits all thruout the battle, blasts of alien weapons mostly blocked by the Kevlar of his uniform. The worst of those burns lay across his abdomen, heavier on his left side. He’d carry the scars for months; he could tell. He could only imagine the civilians who’d been hit by the same blasts. He wondered how high the human death count would get over the next few days. He wondered if anyone would count the Chitauri.

Bucky settled into the backseat of Happy’s car and blew out a tense breath as he leaned back tenderly. He’d been grazed or stabbed by something, and the sliced wound across his shoulders hadn’t finished being sensitive as it closed over. He would have the bruises and breaks from this fight for the next week (he was hardly complaining; the other operatives had been hit just as hard as him and they healed at a human rate, let alone the civilians who hadn’t had the chance to put on a suit of armour before Hell rained down from the sky).

‘We’re gonna ruin the upholstery,’ he said, thinking of how desperate his mother had been to keep their car free of his father’s cigarette ashes.

'Shawarma leaves a little something to be desired,' Tony replied. Bucky and Thor had peeled him out of the damaged suit with some difficulty in the alley behind the Shawarma Palace on Lexington; the owner had asked to keep the broken armour and Tony could honestly have cared less. The real tech was peeled out of the helmet and chest plate and the useless shell of those pieces was left behind. 'Kind of a bummer. Maybe with more hot sauce. I didn’t have enough. Romanov hogged the bottle.'

'Aliens,' Bucky put in dimly. He dropped his head past the headrest, onto the bench seat of one of Tony's cars. Tony chuckled low, running a hand thru his sweaty hair. 'Actual, honest to goodness aliens.'

'Honest to goodness,' Tony echoed softly, almost a giggle. 'And a god. Two demi-gods, technically.' Bucky hummed noncommittally. 'I died today, I think. Pepper specifically told me not to. I’m not gonna get my treat.'

'You didn't die; it was almost,' Bucky promised. 'You're alive. Please don’t tell me what disgusting treat she promised you.'

'Yeah,' Tony agreed. 'Not dead.'

'Neither of us,' Bucky whispered. He closed his eyes but opened them when visions of hundreds of alien soldiers—men, _people_ , surely—dropping like cut puppets. His eyes snapped open and he jolted up in his seat. Tony eyed him from where he lounged about his side of the sedan. Bucky’s breath came out in short pants, his diaphragm tight with fear and spasming.

'Y'all right?' Tony asked.

‘No,’ Bucky admitted. ‘Lotta death out there today. Lotta killing.’

‘We stopped it,’ Tony pointed out.

‘We killed them, as much as they killed us,’ Bucky said. He was shaking. He hadn’t even peeled off his uniform yet, just his gloves and his stupid fucking boots. He was pretty sure the owner of Shawarma Palace had kept the red fucking boots and the gloves too. He didn’t care. He had scrubbed his face, neck and hands clean in stocking feet in the staff bathroom of Shawarma Palace but he still felt dirtier than he’d been since that assault on a HYDRA base in southern Poland in February, when they’d struck at night thru a practical sea of mud.

'Do you think the Chitauri were conscious?' he asked. He twisted in the seat, peeling the top half of his uniform off. The damaged Kevlar ripped away easily. The blue shirt he wore underneath was soaked with sweat; he figured the stench of blood on both of them was worse than the admittedly ripe smell of soaked armour. 'When Romanov closed the portal, when they fell, did they die or did they drop? Did they suffer?'

'Whoa,' Tony said. 'They invaded Earth.'

'Loki invaded Earth; they were just soldiers,' Bucky pointed out. He pulled his left arm out of the sleeve delicately. His shoulder stung and pinched horribly. He twisted his head to look at his shoulder blade and saw why. Another burn from a Chitauri blast covered half his back, above the gash he’d thought had been the only thing paining him. 'They were slaughtered en masses and he goes home.'

'Holy shit,' Tony said. 'You were a soldier. You've killed before.'

'I know,' Bucky snapped. He did know. Fuck, how could he ever fucking forget? He’d killed a huge amount of people. He’d probably killed some civilians, frankly, in his time at war in Europe, caused the deaths of HYDRA prisoners of war, of innocent Jews when the camps had heard the Commandos were coming. He couldn’t know for sure, especially not now, in the future, with the truth so far away. 'That doesn't mean it doesn't bother me. Did we create a generation of orphans today?'

'Buck,' Tony began, soft. 'We won today.'

'Yeah,' he echoed. He leaned back again. ‘Yeah.’ He pressed his still-filthy forehead to the window. The cheap soap and only partially-working faucet hadn’t cleaned him enough. It still felt like wartime against his skin.

‘Hey, man, seriously,’ Tony said. He leaned in his seat, slowly and painfully, to touch Bucky’s knee. ‘Yeah, Loki came up with this idea, but they agreed to do it in exchange the Cube. It’s not like they were drafted; they weren’t like you. They came to get a weapon in exchange for wreaking havoc. You fought them off for no damn payment at all.’ Bucky took his friend’s hand, squeezing as tight as he dared. A cut along the inside of his ring finger stung at the force; Bucky tried to let the sensation ground him. Tony matched him.

‘I thought you were dead,’ he said. ‘I thought the only person I had left was gone.’

‘You and I are still here,’ Tony promised. ‘We’re still kicking ass. We’re gonna go home, clean up, and let Pepper tuck us in to bed, maybe bring us a hot chocolate with a shot of fucking bourbon. It’s over.’

‘Yeah,’ Bucky agreed. He pulled his hand away and Tony retreated to his half of the car. Happy eyed them in the rearview mirror. Bucky met the man’s eye. He wasn’t prying; Bucky could tell. He was concerned for his boss, his friend. Maybe he wasn’t concerned in that order. 'Do you still have everything you got off the SHIELD servers?' Bucky asked, after a long moment. He looked over at Tony.

'Yeah, JARVIS downloaded them remotely,’ he promised.

‘Tomorrow maybe, will you show me how to look at them?’ Bucky asked.

‘You betcha, Capsicle,’ Tony said, struggling to push his door open as Happy turned the car off in the Stark Tower parking garage. ‘Oh, god.’

‘Let Happy help you,’ Bucky said, pushing his own door open. He hurt too, but he would heal faster than Tony. If he pushed himself too hard now, it would hurt a little more for a week, not by a lot for six months. ‘Let me help you.’

‘I need no help,’ Tony sing-songed deliriously as Happy hauled his arm over his shoulders. ‘I am Iron Man.’

‘I am Captain America,’ Bucky agreed, hooking Tony’s other arm across his own shoulders. He took most of the weight from Happy, but neither of them mentioned it. It didn’t matter.

Together, they carried their friend inside.

^^^

SHIELD had been building nuclear weapons with the Cube. That was hardly a surprise. They had even built a series of pistols and rifles that could destroy men like HYDRA weapons could. The gun Coulson had fired at Loki was a modified version of the HYDRA Mae West tank gun; it had been compressed to be even smaller than a shoulder mounted launcher. They had dozens of high-destruction models. As far as Bucky could tell, none of them had been mass produced before the Cube had been sent back to Asgard.

That didn’t make any of it less sickening.

Bucky’s apartment on the thirty first floor was mostly untouched by the carnage of the Battle of New York. One of his bedroom windows had been shattered. Cold air spilled in thru the floor-to-ceiling hole. Bucky had taken the laptop Tony had explained to him and settled on the ledge. The heavy denim of his dungarees stopped what glass lingered inside from cutting him. His feet dangled over the edge, in open air, but it didn’t bother him. He had sort of expected the height might scare him a bit, but the building felt so much more solid than a plane. He looked out over the city and the relief crews reconstructing Grand Central Station, countless other buildings. He’d spent the new day sweeping glass and helping construction workers lift heavy wreckage and new steel. He was sore and tired.

Bucky looked back down at the screen he’d balanced in his lap.

He was reading over his own files; after he’d read everything about the Tesseract and the idea for the Avengers, he hadn’t known what else to look up. He had been right to be suspicious of the SHIELD doctors. All of the notes in his modern medical files stopped focusing on the pulmonary and cellular damage from the drowning and the ice pretty quickly. Bucky supposed the serum was enough to correct all of that on its own, but it still disturbed him to read doctors’ notes which described his strength and compared his abilities to Philips’ and Brandt’s files from the forties so clinically and in such a weaponized tone.

Bucky had sparred against a member of STRIKE Team Alpha as one of his tests, a Brock Rumlow, which had made him hugely uncomfortable. He’d held back a lot, because he was freakishly strong and could have broken the man in two if he had really tried. The final paragraph of Rumlow’s report on him didn’t make any sense.

_The Captain held back for my safety. This could be corrected. The Captain could join the asset, given the proper training. His physiology allowed him to survive the Arctic; his comparatively slow rate of healing would make his adjustment less problematic. After discussing with medical advisors: maximum estimated project completion: one year six months with minor maintenance (compare: three years ten months with minor and surgical maintenance)._

__

‘JARVIS?’ Bucky called, turning from the wind whipping at the thirty first floor so the computer in his walls could hear him. He wished he could just ask Rumlow, but the guy had given him the creeps and trying to talk to the fucking creep would mean willing going back to a SHIELD HQ. Bucky didn’t want any confusion about that; he was done with SHIELD. He also knew the chances of getting a straight answer are virtually nil. The report hadn’t been made out to Fury, hadn’t even been placed directly into his files, but into a previously-hidden auxiliary Tony’s hack had recovered with everything else. It wasn’t even made out to a named SO, but to a numbered code he couldn’t recognize.

‘Yes, sir? Do you require assistance?’ the AI replied.

‘Yeah,’ Bucky said. ‘How do I search these files? Tony said I should be able to.’

‘I can run the search remotely, if you’d like. With a data amount of this size, even Master Stark would employ me over himself,’ JARVIS said. Bucky laughed. He liked that even the AI understood he wanted to feel proficient with new technologies. ‘What search do you require?’

‘Two: the supervising officer code,’ he said first, and he saw it highlight blue on his screen for a moment as JARVIS took the information. ‘And they mention an asset in my file,’ Bucky continued. ‘What’s the asset?’ JARVIS was silent for a moment.

‘Unfortunately, sir, that is a very vague term,’ JARVIS replied. ‘The keyword ‘asset’ is used in thousands of files and mission reports. To find the asset you mean by context might take me a few hours and I may not be accurate in my findings. I also must warn you; no files beyond a level six clearance were recovered remotely; it was not possible. There is a chance nothing I turn up will be what you are looking for.’ Bucky sighed. He would ask Tony tomorrow about it, but he was tired now and the sun was setting along the skyline.

‘There’s a lot to sift thru,’ Bucky agreed. He shut the laptop’s lid and pushed the impossibly tiny computer along the bamboo hardwood away from the window ledge. He didn’t even know where to start. It was all so overwhelming. ‘Will you let me know when you find something for me?’

‘Of course, sir,’ JARVIS agreed. ‘Also, Miss Potts is on her way to your apartment. She has asked after you several times today while you were out in the city. She wishes to verify your well-being.’

‘Tell her I’m in the bedroom,’ he said. He turned back to the skyline. He swung his feet absently, looking down at the street below. Taxis and tourists had already returned to traffic. Bucky bet New Yorkers would be more brassed off long term about the outages of the trains and the roads, the inevitable construction traffic, rather than damage itself. They were an impatient people.

Some things never changed.

‘Bucky?’ Pepper called after a few minutes. He looked over his shoulder. Pepper looked like a wreck. Her eyes were puffy and she began nearly crying again as she spotted him. She couldn’t join him on the glass-laden floor; she wore a smart, charcoal pencil skirt. He hauled himself up and she clicked over to him in her heels, rounding the grossly large bed Tony had provided.

‘My God, are you all right?’ she demanded. She threw her arms around him and he let out an oof. She was so small against him that it was almost entirely in jest. ‘I was so worried; I took care of Tony last night and came down first thing in the morning. You were already gone for the clean-up and I had to start on our own—’

‘We’re both all right, Tony and I,’ Bucky promised, cutting her off, ‘mostly.’ He gave her a hug which nearly lifted her off her feet. He let her go and she pressed her tiny hands to his cheeks, searching him. He gave her a smile. It felt tired but he meant it. He didn’t want Pepper to waste time worrying about him; he wanted Pepper to worry about Tony. She released his face, reluctant.

‘Are you really all right?’ she asked, tucking her hair behind her ears. ‘Tony said you were pretty upset.’

‘Every Chitauri soldier on this side of the portal dropped when Agent Romanov turned off the machine,’ he told her, honest. He sat on the bed, still sore and achy. ‘They might have been people, for all intents and purposes, you know? Capable of thought, or of suffering. There might be widows and sisters and parents who won’t get the bodies of their family back. Even if people here cared about that, we can’t send those bodies home.’ She sank into the mattress beside him.

‘Gosh, you really like to torture yourself,’ she said. Pepper wiped her eyes self-consciously. ‘It was kind of _do or die_ out there. I watched the whole thing on the news when I was flying back.’

‘Do or die doesn’t always make things easier,’ Bucky pointed out. He brushed his thumb over her cheek.

‘Sorry,’ she said, pulling away. ‘I’m being silly. I wasn’t even involved and I’m all shaken up.’

‘You woulda been the widow left behind, had things gone a little differently,’ Bucky said. ‘Don’t be sorry. It’s the Chitauri like you I’m worried about.’ Pepper stared at him for a long moment before shaking her head. She looked at the floor and a small section of bangs fell across her eyes.

‘Wow,’ she said. ‘You are a better person than me.’

‘I had help getting this way,’ Bucky laughed. ‘Lotta good people taught me a lotta good lessons. Learning is all we can hope for.’ Pepper shook her head again and smiled; the smile reached her damp eyes. Bucky thought of Steve, whose pure heart and big mouth had kept Bucky from turning bitter, cynical and cruel during the hardest of their days. Bucky wondered how he was supposed to manage it alone. ‘How’s Tony? Actually.’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘He says he’s all right. I’m sure he’s not. He was in space, for crying out loud.’

‘Pepper, he almost died,’ Bucky admitted. He leaned his elbows onto his knees, feeling the stretch of the burns and gashes on his back and the pinch of the scabs across his abdomen. ‘I don’t know if he told you, but I had really thought I’d let you lose him.’

‘Bucky, it wasn’t up to you to protect him,’ she said. He shook his head.

‘He’s my lieutenant,’ Bucky said, because it was true. ‘Of course it’s my job to protect him. I’m not gonna fail again.’ He was thinking mostly of Steve, who’d always been a private even when he was Bucky’s second. He thought about failing Steve and watching him fall and fall and fall. Pepper might think he was a good person, but he wasn’t a good enough captain to keep his people safe. He didn’t know if he’d ever be. Pepper’s face twisted and she was on the verge of tears again. She touched his shoulder and kissed his cheek tenderly.

‘God, you are a blessing,’ she told him. ‘Just an absolute wonder.’ He ducked his head into her shoulder, breathing thru his nose as he tried not to cry, and she held him. ‘It’s gonna be OK,’ she said, sounding a bit uncertain. He didn’t let go, and his own eyes were stinging so he couldn’t lift his head.

‘I want to go _home_ ,’ he admitted. His voice was rough as the broken glass littering his floor. If he wasn’t careful, it might cut Pepper too. ‘Tony’s got you, and you’ve got Tony, but the one I got died so fucking long ago.’

‘Oh, Bucky,’ Pepper sighed, squeezing him tight. ‘I’m so sorry. I’m sure she would have known what to say if she were here. I’m so sorry I don’t.’ Bucky pulled away. He didn't want to correct her or explain, so he just forced a smile. This one felt just as tired but he didn’t mean it this time. He hoped Pepper couldn’t tell.

^^^

When Bucky saw Fury in his sitting room, he honestly considered leaving the man in his house, just turning around and walking out and walking until he hit Brooklyn. He sighed as the door slid shut behind him. He sort of liked the modern convenience of Tony's building, because all the automation and gadgets kept him reminded of what century he was in, but now he wished he could slam a door angrily and kick this crumb out of his home.

'Director,' Bucky said tightly, tossing his gym bag down by the door. Fury stood, rising out of the armchair he'd settled in. It prickled Bucky's hackles, like he was a cat whose territory was encroached. ‘You’re in my house.’

'Captain,' Fury replied, coolly. 'You've been ignoring our calls,' he added, no pretence or apology. He crossed to Bucky's foyer, extending a hand for Bucky to shake, like he hadn't already broken in. Bucky coughed out a laugh, looking down at the palm extended to him.

'I don't work for you,' Bucky pointed out, letting the hand dangle, empty. He toed his shoes off and reestablished space between them. 'So, no, I don't return your calls.'

'You do work for us,' Fury said. 'You're an Avenger, Cap; you have a duty to this world.'

'See, I don't remember agreeing to work for you,' Bucky practically growled. ‘The draft’s over. So I don’t, in fact, work for you.’

'Why? You're unhappy with the state of things?' Fury asked. Bucky laughed.

'You tried to drop a _nuclear bomb_ on Manhattan,' he snapped. His shoulders were tense with anger, because he'd been angry since he woke up and he couldn't keep it down when there was a real threat that he might not be able to do anything about. 'On civilians. On my _team_. On me. You're God damned right I'm unhappy. If I had the authority to pull Romanov and Barton from your roster, I would. Don't think I haven't voiced it to them.'

'I was against the Council's decision,' Fury said. Bucky nodded, wandering into his kitchen. His unwelcome guest followed him.

'Well, you work for them,' Bucky said. He pulled a glass from the cupboard, filling it with water from his very own tap. 'You pick up when they call.'

'Captain, are really willing to let the world burn for your pride?' Fury asked. He raised a brow, over his eyepatch, which undercut his seriousness. Bucky scoffed.

'I don't think I can stop it by working with the men who tried to burn it themselves,' Bucky said. 'Get out of my house.'

'This is Tony Stark's house,' Fury pointed out. 'You trust Tony Stark?'

'I trust that he would also ask you to leave,' Bucky said. He pushed off the counter, and nodded his head at the door. 'Thanks for stopping by.' He turned around, leaving his glass on the island and reaching for bread.

'Who else will recruit you? The Army? They've done worse lately than us,' Fury said from behind him. 'Are you going to go back to being a spy? You'd have to find another dame to work under.'

Bucky slammed his empty hands against the counter, dropping his head between his shoulders. That hit him like a blow. He hated it; he hated revealing himself like this.

'Bucky,' Fury said. 'You've lost a lot. I'll give you that. Agent Carter founded SHIELD, at least in part. It would be a service to her memory.'

'She's lost that,' Bucky said after a long moment of silence. He breathed slow, turning to face Fury. 'Isn't the war over? Director, when do I get to go home? I never thought I'd be a soldier forever. I never wanted to be a soldier at all.'

'Your home is gone,' Fury pointed out. 'You've lost everything from before. If you want a chance at getting something for now, for your future, you'll be a soldier for us.'

'I don't like the choices you've made,' Bucky said. 'You lied, you manipulated and you tried to destroy a city without coordinating with your own men on the ground. You tried to destroy _civilians_.'

‘I didn’t lie,’ Fury said. ‘I avoided certain truths.’ Bucky laughed darkly.

‘Look, you need trust to be a soldier,’ he pointed out. ‘That’s what makes it an army, not a bunch of jerks running around shooting guns.’

'Unfortunately, you don't have a choice,' Fury said. 'I've tried asking nicely. Your serum represents a significant investment in proprietary technologies. If you don't want to be a soldier, you'll have to challenge our right to, well, you.'

He pulled an envelope from his lapel, almost shockingly white against his dark clothes and skin. He held it out and Bucky sighed. He crossed the kitchen and took it. He slid it open and pulled out legalese he didn't understand.

'If you'd answered our calls, you would have moved into staff housing in DC, gotten to do a lot of good work, saved a lot of lives,' Fury said as Bucky scanned the subpoena. 'Now, you'll move at your own expense, and spend the next six months to a year sorting out very complicated patents, providing a lot of investigative samples in court-ordered labs. But we did ask nicely.' Bucky searched the page and nodded to himself. ‘It can stop any time if you drop your claim to our technology.’

'So you're gonna strong arm me into doing what you want,' Bucky said, sounding sincere as he could. 'Really establishes trust between us, thank you,' he added, and Fury scoffed, making his way out of Bucky's home. 'My concerns about your respect for human life and agency are resolved,' he muttered.

The door slid open and shut, without any theatrics or closure.

Bucky sunk onto a stool at the island counter, the sandwiches he was going to make forgotten. He stared at the sheaf of papers that was apparently going to ruin his life. Most of him felt cold, betrayed. A small part, superficial and quick burning, was raging, fuelled by Fury's jab at Peggy, at what she's accomplished and what she'd built. Maybe Pepper would know what to do. She seemed to run Stark Industries, even if Tony’s name was on the papers.

‘JARVIS?’ Bucky called, balancing a heel on the spindle of the stool he sat on.

‘How can I be of assistance, sir?’ JARVIS asked.

‘Can you ask Miss Potts to come help me with this, when she has time?’ he asked. ‘Can you also never, _ever_ , under literally any circumstances, let Director Fury into this apartment?’

‘Your security preferences are noted, sir,’ JARVIS said. ‘I believe Miss Potts will arrive shortly. Are there details I should pass along?’ Bucky sighed, tossing the papers onto the island behind him. He shook his head.

‘I’m being sued,’ he said.

‘For what, sir?’

‘Myself,’ he said. ‘I’m being sued for the rights to my own DNA.’

^^^

 


End file.
